by Rhys Bowen
I might have stayed longer, but several customers entered at once, so I thanked the shopkeeper and left. Not that I had learned anything from our little chat, I thought. Maybe I was rusty and needed to ask better questions.
I paused outside Miss Willis’s house and took a deep breath. It had been a while since I’d been a detective, prying into other people’s secrets, and it’s amazing how soon one gets out of practice. I repeated my opening remarks to myself in my head before I knocked on the door.
It was opened by a middle-aged woman with a colorless face, her hair, streaked with gray, was drawn back in a severe bun. She was dressed in black and she looked warily at me.
“Yes? Can I help you?” she asked.
“I’m sorry to disturb you, Miss Willis,” I said, and saw her react to my knowledge of her name, “but I’m a reporter with a ladies’ magazine in Manhattan and I’m doing an article on how to keep the family safe in the modern city. I was in the corner shop and I happened to hear that your own poor sister was knocked down by a trolley car. So I wondered if I could take a moment of your time. It’s just the sort of danger we want to warn mothers about. Next time it could be their child, couldn’t it?”
“It could indeed.” She peered out past me as we heard an approaching bell. “You’ve seen the speed they go at. It’s not normal. It’s not Christian. If you ask me, I believe the electricity was sent from the devil himself. I was so glad when old Mr. Cornelius refused to have it put into his own house. I expect Mr. Marcus had it done before his father’s corpse was cold. Always one for change was Mr. Marcus.”
“They were your employers?” I asked.
“They were indeed. And I couldn’t have had a better master than old Mr. Cornelius. A proper gentleman in every sense of the word.” She suddenly seemed to come to her senses and said, “Dear me, what must you be thinking, with me leaving you standing on the doorstep. Come in, do. I’ve just made a pot of coffee and it’s warm on the hob.”
“Thank you. You’re very kind.” I followed her down a little hallway smelling of furniture polish and into a spotlessly neat little back parlor. It was a product of the Victorian era, what we’d now consider old-fashioned—every inch decorated with china ornaments, potted ferns, even a wax flower arrangement under glass. The chairs were red velvet, now faded to a dull brown. I sat on one side of the fireplace while she went to fetch the coffee. On the mantel I noticed there was a photograph of the two sisters—a younger Miss Willis looking at the camera with haughty defiance, and beside her a softer, rounder-faced sister, slightly Oriental in appearance, giving the photographer a big, friendly grin.
“Here we are.” Miss Willis returned. “I baked some gingerbread this morning. It used to be Dolly’s favorite.”
“How kind. And I’m most fond of gingerbread too,” I said. “I take it that’s your sister in the photograph on the mantelpiece?”
“That’s right. When we were twenty-one.”
“Oh. You were twins,” I said.
“We were. Always did everything together. Made it my life’s mission to take care of Dolly. But I couldn’t protect her when she needed it.” She didn’t meet my eye as she handed me my coffee cup.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “What a senseless thing to have happened.”
She nodded, lips pressed together. “She was always so careful crossing the street too. She did just like we told her. At the curb halt. Eyes left. Eyes right. Eyes left again. If all clear, quick march. She used to repeat that every time she stood at the curb.”
“Maybe someone pushed her,” I said, then added quickly, “by mistake, you know. Too eager to cross the road. And she lost her balance. I remember that someone nearly knocked me over on the train platform recently. He was in such a hurry to get to the first carriage.”
“People have no manners these days,” she said.
I realized that I couldn’t ask her whether she suspected Dolly had been pushed deliberately, or whether she could think of anyone who wanted to do Dolly harm. It would be too cruel to put that thought into her head if it wasn’t already there.
“What did the tram driver say?” I asked. “Did he see Dolly step out in front of him and try to stop?”
“He says he saw nothing. A crowd of people waiting to cross the street, and suddenly someone sprawling right under his wheels. He was quite shaken up about it—probably feeling guilty because he was going too fast, if you ask me.”
“‘Sprawling’? That really does sound as if she lost her balance and fell forward, doesn’t it?” I said.
She handed me the plate of gingerbread and then said, “The police were here. They asked me if anyone might want to harm Dolly. What a terrible thing to say. Everyone loved Dolly. She didn’t have a mean bone in her body.”
I nodded in sympathetic understanding. “You don’t have any unfriendly neighbors who might harbor a grudge? There are some really strange people in the world, aren’t there?”
“Not our neighbors. I’ve known them all my life. Nobody moves much in this part of town. We’re like a little village. Take care of each other. They were all so kind when my mother died, and now Dolly.”
“When you worked as a maid, did you live away from home?” I asked, biting into deliciously moist gingerbread.
“I did. I didn’t really want to leave them, but I wasn’t qualified for anything but domestic service and I was lucky with my employer. I was with Mr. Cornelius for twenty-five years. I saw his younger son born and his poor wife die. I really felt part of that family. We all did. So it came as a shock to leave … not that I didn’t want to come home, but all the same…”
“I thought—the lady at the corner shop told me that you had come into money. That’s why you came home.”
“Well, yes, that’s true,” she said. “Mr. Cornelius did leave me a nice legacy when he died, and I probably would have left my position anyway, but it came as a shock, Mr. Marcus telling me that my services were no longer required. He didn’t put it as bluntly as that, you understand, but he said he was going to have the whole house refurbished and simplify his lifestyle, and he didn’t want so many servants. So he was getting rid of me—me who had looked after him most of his life after his mother died. I can tell you that hurt. Such a selfish, arrogant young man he grew up to be.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It must have been really hard for you, losing your employer and your job.”
“Oh, I’m not complaining,” she said. “I have a tidy little sum from Mr. Cornelius. Mr. Marcus couldn’t take that away from me if he tried. If there was one thing Mr. Cornelius knew, it was how to tie up money properly. Well, he would, wouldn’t he, seeing as he’d been a banker all his life.”
We talked a little about the other dangers I was supposedly writing about—the dangers of electricity, and I told her the story about the woman whose lamp fell into the bathtub and electrocuted her. She shook her head in disbelief. “I’m just glad I’m not raising a family in these troubled times,” she said. “They talk about progress, but it seems to me it just brings more heartache and grief.”
I thought it was time for me to leave and I stood up, placing my cup and plate back on the tray. “You’ve been very kind to give me your time,” I said.
“Not at all,” she said. “The house seems awful quiet without Dolly here. Always singing, she was, in that funny little high voice of hers. Sometimes when I close my eyes I can still hear it.”
She escorted me to the front door. I tried to think if there was anything else I could ask her. I couldn’t imagine that she had pushed her own sister. Neither had anyone else from her neighborhood, apparently. Everyone loved Dolly. The only note of disquiet was Miss Willis’s bitterness at having been cast out by her employers after so many years of service. Mr. Marcus—she had said he was the arrogant one. But surely he could have nothing to do with the death of a simple soul.
“Your former employers,” I said. “They lived in Manhattan?”
“Oh, yes. A fine big house on th
e Upper East Side. But I heard Mr. Marcus let it out, or sold it, and went to live in the Dakota building in one of those fancy apartments. That’s the way things go, isn’t it? You build a legacy for your children, and they don’t appreciate it. I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t run his father’s bank into the ground. Never was good with money as a young man. Still, that’s not my concern, is it? Nothing to do with me what he does anymore.”
Twenty-two
“Ah, there you are, just in time for lunch,” Mother Sullivan greeted me as I returned to Patchin Place, hot, tired, and aching. “Had a nice walk? Did you find anything?”
“Find anything?” I looked at her cautiously, wondering what she meant, and whether she had gleaned information from listening in to my chats with Daniel.
“I thought you were on the hunt for more items for the kitchen,” she said. “I mentioned that we could do with a bigger mixing bowl and an egg whisk. It’s too tiring to make a good custard without an egg whisk.”
“Oh, no,” I said. “I didn’t go shopping this morning. I don’t really feel up to facing the crowded stores yet. I’m scared I might get bumped into and injure myself further.”
“So where did you go?” she asked, pointedly. “Just out for a walk, was it, because you were gone a long time.”
I could have told her it was none of her business, but there was no sense in antagonizing her. Besides, she was being good to us, doing virtually all the cleaning and cooking, when at home she had a maid who did such things for her.
“I went to visit an old woman I’d promised to see,” I said. “She lives all alone since her sister died.” I’d found it was always best to stay as close to the truth as possible.
She followed me down the hall after I had hung up my hat and put my gloves on the hallstand. “If it was a social call you could have taken Bridie with you. Old people are often cheered by the sight of a young face.”
I turned then to look at her, forcing myself to bite my tongue. “It was a call I’d told Daniel I’d make,” I said.
She stared at me for what seemed like an eternity. “From my experience it doesn’t pay to try to get involved in your husband’s work,” she said. “It’s not a job for a woman, especially not for a young mother like yourself.”
“I’m not getting involved in his work,” I replied testily. My feet were hurting me, my side was aching, and my head was starting to throb again. “Chatting with a lonely old lady is something a woman can do better than a man.”
“I see.” She said no more but went back to peeling potatoes. I had no doubt she’d have something to say to Daniel about my expedition. I just hoped that wouldn’t make him decide to forbid me any future visits. Not that I’d probably make any difference to his investigation. Miss Willis had not told me anything that gave new insight into what had happened to Dolly—except that the new master of the household where she’d worked had dismissed her after his father died. But what that had to do with a simple old lady being pushed under a trolley car, I failed to see.
When Daniel came home that evening, I waited until we had eaten dinner and were alone in the back parlor before I gave him a full report.
“If she had been unjustly fired from her job, then surely she would have been the one pushing someone under a trolley,” he said, half joking. “Besides, she wasn’t unjustly fired. She inherited a legacy. I suspect her new employer was just being kind—giving her a little nudge, knowing that she didn’t need to work anymore and suspecting she was only staying on out of loyalty.”
“You could be right,” I said, having not considered this.
“Old ladies always like something to complain about,” he said.
“You’re right about that too,” I said, thinking that his mother would no doubt tell him I should not go running around. He smiled, reading my thoughts.
“And I’ve something to report to you and your friends. They exhumed the bodies today. They were badly charred. I don’t know if a pathologist can glean anything from such a body, but I will tell you one thing. Photographs were taken at the scene, and also when the bodies were removed to the morgue. They were both lying on their backs with their arms crossed over their chests, as if laid out for a burial. They were definitely either dead or heavily drugged before that fire started.”
“And there was no obvious sign of how they died?” I asked. “No stab wound or bullet?”
“It wouldn’t be easy to tell that definitely just from observation,” he said. “Maybe when the autopsy is conducted we might find evidence of stabbing or a bullet, but I think not.”
“And suffocation?” I asked. “If someone had put a pillow over their heads as they slept?”
He looked at me again with amusement. “I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to suffocate somebody, but you have to be strong. They would wake up and struggle.”
“So a young girl like Mabel would definitely not have been strong enough to do that.”
“I think it’s unlikely. But she could have administered some kind of poison—although I can’t surmise what that would have been, when the bodies showed no signs of distress. Something quick-acting like cyanide, and the body convulses in agony. Something like arsenic and there would have been prior distress, vomiting…” He paused again. “I can’t believe I’m having this conversation with my wife. It’s not exactly normal drawing room talk, is it?”
“You know that not many wives can help their husbands with insights into a difficult case,” I said. “And you’d be bored if I related everything Liam had done all day and my annoyance with the dressmaker.”
He laughed, and I noticed how much I liked the way his eyes crinkled at the sides when the lines of worry were removed from his face.
“A sleeping draft would be the most obvious,” I said, as this new thought struck me. “If her parents had such a preparation on hand, she could have mixed it into their evening hot milk.”
“You realize you’re coming up with a scenario that makes her look guilty,” Daniel said. “If we find out from the servants that either parent took sleeping powders, and we determine that there were cups near the bed, then I’m afraid Yeats will have your young lady locked up and prosecuted.”
“Oh, dear,” I said. “I just hope that Sid and Gus can find this Dr. Werner soon, and he can help unlock the girl’s dreams. My heart tells me she is innocent, Daniel. I’m sure there is more to this than we are seeing right now.”
I lay awake that night, weighing the events of the day—poor little Mabel and whether I believed her capable of killing her parents, and Miss Willis, grieving for a simpleminded sister. Who might have sneaked up behind an elderly woman and shoved her in front of a trolley? I wondered. But I couldn’t come up with any answers. I could have concluded that Dolly would have inherited her sister’s legacy some day and someone else wanted to inherit, except that the note writer had gone on to murder a strange variety of other people. I toyed with the idea that someone thought he was doing Miss Willis a favor, ridding her of a mentally incompetent sister. But one would only have to have witnessed her grief-stricken face to know that she loved Dolly and missed her.
Although I didn’t say anything to Daniel, I found that the journey to Brooklyn had taken its toll on me. My side ached. My head ached. And when I finally drifted off to sleep, I went straight back to that dream. The narrow dark room. The sound of rumbling that shook every fiber of my body, and the terror that I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.
Daniel shook me awake. “You were moaning in your sleep again,” he said.
“It was that same dream. Trapped in the narrow room and the horrible rumbling.”
“You’re trying to do too much, Molly. We should have listened to my mother and let her take care of you while you recover. No more rushing all over town. It’s not going to get us anywhere. My men and I have already asked every question you asked.” He wrapped a protective arm around me. “Go back to sleep,” he whispered. “I’m here. I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”
* * *
The next morning I had wanted to go visit Simon Grossman’s family, and then Mrs. Daughtery’s son, but my head still ached slightly and I had to admit, reluctantly, that Daniel and his mother were right. I still needed time to heal. And there was probably nothing they could reveal that had not already been revealed to the police. I was sitting on the sofa, watching Bridie teaching Liam how to operate his new toy monkey, when there was a tap at the front door. Bridie went to answer it and I heard Sid’s voice asking if I was home.
“Show them in, Bridie,” I called, and Sid and Gus came into the parlor, their faces alight with excitement.
“We’ve found him, Molly,” Gus exclaimed, perching on the sofa beside me. “We’ve located Dr. Werner. You were right when you suggested the German consulate. We went to see the consul. At first he was sure that Dr. Werner had gone home earlier this year. He said that Dr. Werner had not attended a soiree for the ambassador, who was a friend of his, so he concluded he was no longer in New York. But then he added that he was much in demand as a speaker and could well have been visiting another American city. So he gave us the last address he had for the doctor. It was not far from here as you had suggested—on Ninth Street close to Astor Place. We went there and nobody was home, but a neighbor confirmed that she had seen the doctor coming and going recently—always in a hurry, she said. A busy man and a little curt in his ways. Never wanting to pass the time of day with more than a nod and a ‘Good morning.’”
“So we wrote him a letter,” Sid continued. “We explained the situation and Gus mentioned her own experience studying with Professor Freud and how his colleagues had spoken highly of him, and we asked him to call on us at his earliest convenience.”
“Well, that’s good news,” I said. “I have been worrying about Mabel.” I glanced at Bridie, who was sitting on the carpet with Liam again, but all ears. “Bridie, would you please go and ask Mrs. Sullivan if she would be kind enough to put the coffeepot on for us? I’m sure these two ladies have enough time to stay for a cup of coffee.”
