Girl in Disguise

by Greer Macallister

  “Yes.”

  We made a plan to meet again in two days, and when the time came, he was so visibly eager, I knew at a glance that he had succeeded.

  “Which one?” I said.

  “Mr. Vincent. His mother, God rest her soul, was born Emmaline Bronson.”

  “Good.”

  “Is it enough to prove guilt?”

  “No.” I folded my hands in my lap. “But we have a few possible ways forward.”

  “Enlighten me.”

  “We could confront Mr. Vincent now.”

  “Or?”

  “We could call in the police. Again, as you might guess, our evidence is slim. Mr. Vincent could claim that the money used to pay for the ladies’ gifts came from any old where, and we couldn’t prove otherwise.”

  “So what do you propose?”

  “Let me have a conversation or two, and I’m sure we can bring the matter to a head.”

  “I trust we shall, Mrs. Warne.”

  The only remaining question was whether to approach the mistress or the wife first and attempt to bring her in as a witness in exchange for a lesser sentence. I decided to start with the accountant’s mistress, one Hazel Everette. She was a petite young lady, not very tall at all, but always wearing heeled boots that brought her up to average height. We stood nearly eye to eye, though I had developed a habit of slouching a little in my shopgirl guise. She favored jewelry with a green stone to set off her auburn hair and over time had nearly cleaned the place out of jade and emeralds.

  By this point, I had waited on her at the shop already four or five times. After so many weeks, Mr. Corwin had developed enough trust in me to let me watch the shop alone for short periods. On this occasion, he left us two while he walked out to purchase potpies for lunch—especially as I mentioned I was in the mood for the chicken pie from my favorite tearoom, and he’d be such a dear to bring one—so I had the chance to speak freely.

  She couldn’t decide between three different sets of jade earbobs and, in the end, decided to take all three.

  “A pretty penny,” I said, reaching under the counter for a few small boxes in which she could carry the jewelry away. “All on Mr. Bronson’s account?”

  “Of course.”

  “He certainly funds you generously.”

  She laughed. “I’m worth it.”

  “Is he a tycoon?”

  “An accountant.”

  We’d felt quite sure of the identity of the Bronson account’s real holder, but with this, the last scrap of doubt vanished. “Goodness, I wouldn’t have suspected! An accountant? I can’t imagine that his position pays him enough to afford all this.”

  Matter-of-factly, she said, “No, it doesn’t.”

  “Do you think he’s doing something untoward to get the money?”

  “I’m sure of it.”

  Her even, confident tone should have tipped me off, but I went ahead with my planned question. “And don’t you think that’s wrong?”

  “Oh, honey,” she said. “Whoever do you think gave him the idea?”

  I was speechless. I think she took my shock as the silence of an impressed audience rather than an appalled one.

  “He even tried to stop a few months back,” she said. “I told him if he did, I’d tell his company and the authorities and the world about what he’d been doing. He’s been even more generous since.”

  So I did not enlist her, as I’d hoped, to testify against him. I reported the conversation to Lincoln and asked if he thought we should try again with the wife. He decided instead to confront Mr. Vincent directly, reasoning that a man guilty enough to yield to blackmail would likely collapse under direct questioning.

  He was right. The confession came quickly. The railroad sacked the accountant immediately and claimed his wife’s jewelry to recover what they could of what he owed. They chose not to bring criminal charges against him for fear of publicity, and by the time they went looking for Hazel Everette, she and her gems were already gone.

  Our failure to bring Hazel to justice—she was more guilty than Vincent in my eyes—weighed on me. I didn’t care for the picture of her in my mind’s eye—on to her next victim, silk stockings and jade earbobs to help her snare him, footloose and fancy free.

  And I had a victim of my own. I reported to my final day of work with Mr. Corwin, and the brilliant smile he turned on me as I walked in the door squeezed like a fist around my heart. Lincoln entered the door right after me, officious and brusque, and Corwin’s smile melted away. I could barely look at him as Lincoln explained what had happened, the investigation and its results, and how they would need an official accounting from him of all gems purchased on both the Vincent and Bronson accounts.

  When Lincoln gestured to me in passing as he said, “Our fine agent, Mrs. Warne,” the look on Mr. Corwin’s face turned from surprise to anger, then disgust. I wanted to fling myself into his arms and apologize, tell him everything he thought was between us truly was, even if I’d misrepresented myself, but I kept my composure instead. We’d barely known each other. We had no future—a Pinkerton agent in Chicago and a jewelry store owner in Springfield, a liar and an honest man, worlds apart. As much as I wanted to confess, I couldn’t, knowing it would do no one good.

  And so I watched his face turn hard, crushing my heart with every passing moment, and finally, I just stopped watching.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Actress

  Allan Pinkerton and I knelt on the floor of Bellamy’s costume closet, the cuffs of empty sack coats dangling just above our heads. The agency’s new office on Clark Street was a great sign of our increased success, but it hummed with constant activity, and this room was the only place the boss could avoid the never-ending parade of visitors and operatives wanting his attention. We met here for confidential conversations. Only this time, I feared the conversation might be our last.

  In the new closet, there was a full rack of gowns, shawls, and other ladies’ garments set aside for my use. Bellamy had allowed me the space only grudgingly but didn’t interfere with what I chose. A glance around the room told a story that had not changed; men’s things and men’s things and men’s things, and then mine.

  By the winter of 1860, the Pinkerton Detective Agency had doubled in size, with two dozen operatives and several clerks on its books. We also had a full-time secretary in the front office and half a dozen men who provided what we called “security”: beefy, intimidating men who rarely spoke more than a word or two at a time. I never could tell them apart. They all looked like they might be our sturdy colleague Taylor’s cousins or brothers or Taylor himself.

  As for me, I was more successful than ever and a victim of my own success. Requests for female operatives had soared. The world—or at least Chicago—had finally caught on to what Allan Pinkerton and I had known for ages. Women were better suited to certain investigations than men. As a result, there was far more work than I could handle. I was always working at least two cases at a time. Getting less and less sleep.

  And now it seemed there would be consequences. The night before, I’d failed to show up for a planned rendezvous with some out-of-town visitors we’d been asked to keep an eye on. I’d rarely made such an obvious error, but the boss had noticed this one, and he’d been waiting for me at the top of the stairs, sleeves rolled up. He motioned me toward the small office set aside as the costume closet and closed the door behind us.

  “Warne,” he said, “we must talk.”

  “We are talking.”

  “About your future.”

  “I sincerely hope to have one,” I said. Bravado was my only possible response; fear had settled into my bones almost immediately. I had no idea what might be coming next. I braced myself for a tongue-lashing at best. I didn’t even want to think about what the worst might be.

  He sat back on his heels and said, “Our com
pany is growing. There are new cases, new needs. While I would like to assign you to all of them, I can’t.”

  I considered apologizing for last night’s error; it certainly sounded like he might be gearing up to chastise me for it. Instead, I said, “You can assign me to most of them.”

  “No. I have to pick and choose. We turn away cases every day. Hundreds of people ask our help every month. They’re willing to pay, and most of them have a good story. I can only say yes to a fraction.”

  “So hire more operatives.”

  “Which I do and always have.” Shifting, he propped his weight on a thick fist. “But I’ve decided that we need a new…direction in hiring.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I’d like you to hire and head up my bureau of female detectives. There’s a need for more women like you.”

  I hadn’t felt such a rush of joy and adrenaline since the first day I’d walked into this office. “That’s a lovely thing to say, Boss.”

  “I don’t say it to flatter you. It’s a fact.” He didn’t smile, and I knew he was telling the truth as he saw it. “Women can go places men can’t, and now I need a team of women to investigate those places.”

  “You could hire them yourself.”

  “Faith, woman, are you trying to talk yourself out of a promotion? That doesn’t sound like you.”

  Finally, I grinned. “No, it doesn’t. So you want me to do the hiring, since I know what it takes to make a successful female operative in your employ.”

  “That’s the ticket.”

  “And when you say ‘head up’?”

  “Hire them and train them. Supervise them. Dismiss them if necessary, though I warn you it’ll look like poor judgment on your part if you fire too many. Looks like you reverse your opinion too quickly. Hire the right ones, and you’ll never have to fire any. Hire the wrong ones, and God help you.”

  “I imagine you might also try to help me a little.”

  “A little, perhaps. The truth is you don’t need help. You’re savvy enough to do this single-handed. So go forth. Assuming you want the promotion, of course.”

  “If it comes with a raise in pay.”

  “It does.”

  “Then, yes, I do.”

  He smiled, a big open grin. “You could thank me, you know.”

  I returned the grin. “I could! And you could thank me for taking the job.”

  We shook hands, which we’d rarely done, and my elbow nearly knocked over a stack of hats piled by the window.

  “Make me proud,” he said.

  “I intend to.”

  And that was how it began. Not just the first woman detective, I would now be the first woman supervisor of detectives. I would tackle the challenge with everything in me. I couldn’t wait.

  • • •

  Once I started looking, nearly every woman in the world seemed like a potential operative. I even considered hiring a woman who tried to pick my pocket on the elevated train. As I rode toward Hyde Park, leaving the Van Buren station behind us, a woman in black exclaimed just in front of me, “Oh no! Was that Van Buren? Does anyone know?” I turned back because, of course, I wanted to confirm that was the station we’d left, and in a split second, I realized it was a trick. Pinkerton had been working on a book about how to identify criminals, and I’d read a draft recently. This gambit was on the list.

  When her hand went to my pocket, my hand went to her wrist and locked it tight. Then I asked her to come to the office the next day, not telling her it was a detective office, knowing how that might seem to someone who’d been caught in an illegal act. In the end, she did not show up for our appointment, understandably. I decided it was probably for the best. Perhaps my colleagues wouldn’t necessarily warm to someone with her history. It was important to me first and foremost that I choose the right women for the job, but it was also important to consider the conditions and give everyone the best chance for success.

  I also placed a newspaper ad and interviewed several candidates who answered it. I’d deliberately left the wording vague. Only the most interested women, I thought, would apply. I imagined a series of adventuresses, women who were almost bold enough to traipse out onto the frontier but stayed in Chicago for one reason or another. Unfortunately, truth didn’t live up to my imagination.

  On the first day I’d named in the advertisement, a parade of women appeared at the office to interview. Five, ten, a dozen. I judged them and found them wanting as soon as they walked in. Some simply wanted to sit at a desk and thought that this work would be clerical or even merely decorative. Other women barely glanced at me when they came in, their eyes still searching for a man in authority.

  After lunch, I was exhausted. The fifteenth interviewee, a woman with brown hair gone gray at the temples, strode confidently into my office and asked, “Is the boss here?”

  I answered, “I’m the boss.”

  The look she gave me could only be described as one of distaste. “I don’t answer to anyone in a corset.”

  Immediately, I invited her to leave, and it would be hard to say which of us was more relieved when the door closed behind her.

  Much of the afternoon brought more of the same. But finally, a woman walked in who I thought might be promising. She was the twenty-first.

  “Your name?”

  “Hattie Lawton,” she said, extending a hand. It was delicate and birdlike, and so was she. Glossy chestnut hair, small round shoulders. A print dress in tones of copper and rust that somehow called attention to her striking green eyes. Narrow ankles in expensive shoes. Skin like a china doll. She was among the most beautiful women I’d ever seen. This might come in handy as an operative, or it might make her useless. Beautiful women were memorable.

  “Current profession?”

  “I’m an actress,” she said, and something in me soured. I’d met a lot of actresses, and most of them I’d cared little for. In the wings, they’d often say, Oh, look at you, you’re such a good girl; if my father overheard, he would look them up and down and ask wolfishly, What kind of girl were you? Too many of them smiled and simpered in response, and I’d have to look away, knowing what was to come.

  Then she added, “Well, I want to be an actress. My parents disapprove.”

  “I know what that’s like.”

  She smiled, and her smile was a sweet one, not too perfect. She had a crooked tooth. Not in front, but farther back. It only showed with her widest smile. It made me start to like her again.

  I sketched the life of an operative for her in a few short strokes. How we helped out on cases that didn’t go directly to the police for one reason or another. How we were able to capture dangerous criminals, counterfeiters, murderers, all sorts of untoward types. How we rarely took public credit and had to be satisfied with private knowledge of our success, hush hush.

  She replied, a glint in her green eyes, “Sounds perfect.”

  Then I asked her, “Are you sure you can do what’s required?”

  “Well, what’s required?”

  She was sharp. Things were definitely looking up. “A good question, but one I can’t fully answer. You have to lie to people’s faces. You have to stay out late, get up early, go days without contacting friends and family if needed.”

  “Oh, don’t worry. I have no friends.” I wondered if that was perhaps the first time anyone had offered up a lack of friendships as a qualification for a position. Truth be told, it was helpful.

  “Well, the fewer people you have to explain yourself to, the better. This isn’t a desk job. There are nights you won’t be home for dinner. You’ll need to travel at the drop of a hat.”

  “I’m ready,” she said.

  So far, she’d said all the right things. One key question remained. “Why do you want to be a detective?”

  “Because I like to do what no one else is doing. I kno
w of only one female detective in the world—who wouldn’t want to be the second? And I need the money.”

  I shook her hand and nodded without giving anything away, but her reasoning sounded solid to me.

  Late in the afternoon, I found Pinkerton, who asked, “How were today’s interviews?”

  “Good. I have one likely candidate.”

  “A sure thing?”

  “Not quite sure yet.”

  “Why? What holds her back?”

  “She’s beautiful,” I said. “It’s problematic.”

  “Why?”

  I appreciated him not assuming that it was a case of an unattractive woman being jealous of an attractive one. That played no part.

  “Beautiful women are memorable.”

  “Yes. It limits how you can use her.”

  “So, your advice. Would you hire her anyway?”

  “I hired Graham DeForest, didn’t I?”

  I mulled it over. The parallel was perfect. Even knowing DeForest now as long as I had and even knowing what I knew, I still sometimes lost my breath when he walked in a room and turned his bright smile on me. His face was compelling enough to make a woman forget everything else. His looks commanded, demanded attention. Hattie would be the same.

  Pinkerton said, “Physical beauty is the one thing you can’t train into them. They have it or they don’t, and you might need it. Understand?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “But it’s your decision,” said Pinkerton. “You’re in charge.”

  There were women who swooned for all sorts of words. I love you, I want you, you’re so beautiful. I had never heard three words from a man that thrilled me so much, all the way to my very core. Perhaps because when I’d heard the other words—on the rare occasion they’d been spoken to me—I’d never quite believed them.

  I believed Pinkerton trusted me completely.

  You’re in charge.

  These words, at last, were right.

  • • •

  After another day of interviews and another chain of disappointments—silly women, shy women, women who seemed more likely victims than saviors—I needed to take some kind of break. My brain was spinning. I was accustomed to operating in the dark, in the corners, on the job. I was not used to thinking about hiring and training and other mundane concerns. Exhilaration had given way to exhaustion. I hoped it would only be temporary.