Tell Me Pretty Maiden

by Rhys Bowen

  While we had been inside the dormitory building a great bank of clouds had been building to the east. They looked as if they were heavy with the promise of more snow. I was tempted to agree that we should head back to New York, but a small voice inside my head whispered that I’d have no time to come up here again and I didn’t want to leave my investigation in Daniel’s hands. “Oh, I think we’ll be fine,” I said. “As long as we find ourselves a covered cab. I remember getting drenched by a downpour in Ireland. I don’t wish to repeat that.”

  There were several cabs lined up outside the station, the horses with their faces stuck in a nosebag and the cabbies sitting under a shelter out of the cold wind. One of them rose to his feet reluctantly as he saw us.

  “You need a cab, sir?”

  “We need to go out to the Silverton Mansion,” Daniel said. “It’s out toward Bridgeport, I gather. Do you know of it?”

  “I know more or less where it is, yes,” the man said. He was thin and pinched and his cheeks were bright red with the cold. “Quite a ways out. I don’t know if I want to put my horse through that, in this cold wind.”

  “Fine. If your horse isn’t up to it,” I said, “maybe you can direct us to a livery stable where we can rent a buggy of our own.”

  “I didn’t say he wasn’t up to it,” the cabby said hastily. “He’s a good enough horse, but it’s a long ride. Won’t be cheap.”

  “It doesn’t look as if you have much demand for your services apart from us,” I said. “Name your price and we’ll decide if it’s fair.”

  The old man glanced shiftily from me to Daniel. “I’ll do it for two dollars, sir,” he said.

  “Two dollars—,” I began but Daniel put a hand on my arm. “Fine. We accept. Now let’s get going before that snow starts to come down.”

  The cabby helped me up and draped a rug over my knees. Daniel climbed in beside me. “You drive a hard bargain,” he said.

  “I’m glad you’re finally realizing that I’m no blushing violet,” I said. “I’m a businesswoman, on my own in a big city. I’ve had to learn to survive.”

  The horse set off at a good pace, the sound of the hoofbeats echoing through empty streets. The squares at the center of town gave way to narrow streets of row houses, poor working-class neighborhoods where stiff laundry hung out on washing lines and hardy children played in the dirty remains of snow. Then gradually the town came to an end. We crossed a frozen river by a bridge. Some boys had made a slide on the ice and were taking turns at it. There was now snow on the road and the paved surface had given way to rutted track so that we bumped along, the icy puddles crunching under our wheels. If the road to New York is like this all the way, I thought, what on earth had made John Jacob Halsted drive his precious motor car as far as the Bronx? And he certainly wouldn’t have done so with a girl in the seat beside him. She’d have been shaken up like a sack of potatoes.

  About a mile or so out of town the cabby stopped to ask directions at a tavern.

  “It’s just around the next bend,” he said with relief showing on his face. We passed a row of stately trees—elms, I believe, although it was hard to tell from bare wintry branches—and then came to a fine brick gateway. The wrought-iron gates were closed. Through them we could see a semicircular driveway in front of an impressive gray stone house, rising three stories high with a turret in one corner. The cabby stopped his horse on the street outside.

  “Here it is. Silverton Mansion,” he said. “You want to go in there?”

  “Of course. That’s why we came,” Daniel said shortly.

  “They expecting you?”

  “No, but we’re friends of the family,” Daniel answered.

  “I hope so. I hear they don’t take kindly to curiosity seekers, not after what happened. You did hear what happened, didn’t you? How the young fellow robbed them of all their silver and jewelry and shot the butler who had been with them for twenty years or more?”

  “Yes, we heard,” I said.

  Daniel started to climb down and then offered me a hand.

  “You want me to wait?” the cabby asked.

  I could tell that Daniel was getting quite annoyed with him. “We certainly don’t want to walk back into town,” he snapped.

  “I don’t expect we’ll be more than half an hour,” I said. “Why don’t you go back and get yourself a hot drink at the tavern, then meet us outside here.”

  “All right, ma’am,” he said, touching his cap to me. “I’ll do just that.”

  We left him turning the horse in a driveway across the street and I stepped through the gate as Daniel held it open for me.

  “There’s no lack of money here, is there?” I muttered as I took in the size of the edifice and the land surrounding it. “What do you know about the Silvertons? How did they make their money?”

  “Armaments,” Daniel said. “Supplied both sides in the Civil War and the U.S. Army ever since.”

  We hadn’t reached the house when the front door opened and a young man came out, pointing a shotgun at us.

  “If you’re more damned reporters, you’d better make yourselves scarce before I shoot,” he shouted.

  “Are you Harry Silverton?” Daniel called back to him. “Would you please lower that thing? We’ve been sent by John Jacob Halsted’s family.”

  “You don’t think any connection to that rat would be welcome at our house, do you?” Harry said, but he did lower the gun.

  “We are just trying to unearth the truth,” I said, stepping in front of Daniel in the belief that I’d appear less threatening. “This is Captain Sullivan of the New York police and I am Miss Murphy. Mr. Halsted’s family is naturally worried sick about what might have happened to him. There has been no sign of him since his motor car was found almost a week ago.”

  “Isn’t it obvious what happened to him? He’s made off with the loot. Probably on a ship to South America by now.”

  “Might we come in for a few minutes and hear your side of this story?” I asked. “All we have heard so far is bits and pieces and most of that is rumor and hearsay.”

  “I suppose so.” Harry Silverton ushered us into a wide marble hallway, decorated with Roman statues and potted palms. “You’d better come into the morning room. Mama is in the drawing room and I don’t want to make her more upset than she already is.”

  He opened a door to his left and we found ourselves in a corner room that was part of that turret. It was octagonal with windows looking out over the garden and was decorated with wicker furniture and Chinese wallpaper. In the summer, with the sun streaming in, I suspected it would be delightful, but not today. There was no fire in the grate and the room was cold. Silverton indicated a wicker armchair for me to be seated.

  “We’ll only take a few minutes of your time,” Daniel said, refusing the offer to sit himself. “How well did you know Mr. Halsted?”

  “I considered we were good pals,” Harry Silverton said in a clenched voice. “I met him in my final year at Yale. He joined our polo club. Damned fine horse man. I brought him home to meals. We stayed in touch after I graduated and went to work in the family firm. We went out riding together and to the occasional horse race.”

  He paused, scowling out of the window at the snowy scene beyond.

  “We would just like to hear exactly what happened that night,” I said. “We’ve interviewed John Jacob’s friends, and according to them, he was bound for the theater. Could you tell us whether he changed his mind?”

  “No, he went to the theater all right. He telephoned me about ten thirty, I suppose it was, or maybe a little closer to eleven. How would I like to make up a party and go out for a late supper with him, he asked. At first I refused. It was a beastly cold night and I was tired. I’d been at the factory all day, working on a rush order that had to go out. I told him it was dashed late for supper and on a weeknight, too. But JJ wouldn’t take no for an answer. He said I’d regret it if I didn’t come with him and he’d already booked at table at Angelico�
��s and I’d be in for a pleasant surprise.”

  “Did he say what that surprise was?”

  “I rather took it that he had a young lady set up for me. He said we’d be a jolly party. He even offered to drive out in his new automobile and pick me up. So I relented and went upstairs to change into my black tie and tails.”

  Harry Silverton perched on the chair opposite me and talked on, looking down at his hands. “I finished changing and he didn’t show up so I was feeling seriously miffed, I can tell you. Then I heard the sound of an automobile engine revving up outside. I went to my bedroom window. It was dark out there but I recognized JJ’s vehicle—well, that wasn’t hard considering he’d splashed out on a spanking new job called a Cadillac, and had it painted bright red. And the strange thing was that it was driving out of our gates and took off like a bat out of hell, heading away from town toward Bridgeport.

  “Well, I damned him soundly to hell for putting me through all that trouble and then not even bothering to wait for me. I got undressed and went to bed. The next thing I knew it was morning and someone was screaming. I rushed downstairs to find one of our maids in hysterics. She had gotten up to light the fires and had discovered our butler, Cranson, sprawled on the floor in the servants’ quarters, outside the butler’s pantry. Naturally we thought he’d had a heart attack or a stroke. But when we turned him over we saw a dashed great pool of blood under him. And then we realized that he had been shot.”

  He looked up at me and I nodded sympathetically. “It must have been a horrible shock for you.”

  “It was, I can tell you. Poor old chap. Never done anybody harm in his entire life and some cad goes and shoots him.”

  “But you didn’t hear a shot?” Daniel asked.

  “The servants are below stairs and the butler’s pantry is right at the back of the house, away from any rooms that we are currently using. I suppose one might have heard a pop and thought of an auto backfiring, but as it was, I heard nothing. I could have been in the shower, getting ready to go out.”

  “Or it could have been after you’d fallen asleep.”

  “That could have been possible,” Harry said slowly, “except we now know what happened that night. When we checked the silver cabinet, the silver had all been taken. And my mother’s jewels. The burglar had only taken the good stuff.”

  “How come none of the servants heard anything?” I asked.

  Harry shook his head. “They had all gone to bed long before and their bedrooms are all at the top of the house. Cranson used to sit in his pantry and have a late glass of whiskey before he locked up. He must have surprised the burglar and paid for it with his life.”

  “So you believe that this burglar was JJ Halsted?” I asked.

  “I have no other choice,” he replied in a clipped voice. “His vehicle was seen driving away at a great rate and later when it was discovered wrecked on the road to New York City, one of our pieces of silver was found under the seat.”

  “Did anyone else see the motor car leaving your house or parked in your driveway?”

  “No, just me. We’re a lot of country bumpkins when it comes to bedtime. Father is always up at crack of dawn to be at factory early and so we are in the habit of retiring before ten. The servants earlier than that since they are expected to be up before us.”

  “And you believe that your friend, Mr. Halsted, could really have shot your butler?” Daniel asked.

  “Again, I don’t know what else to believe.” Harry’s voice rose in tension. “I can only put two and two together. Halsted’s auto is seen driving away. It contains an item stolen from our house and our butler is lying dead.”

  “But if he intended to rob you, why telephone you to announce his arrival?” I asked. “Wouldn’t that put the household on the alert for him when surely he needed stealth to accomplish his theft?”

  Harry frowned, considering this. “I can only think that when he got here something gave him the idea. Perhaps he found the front door unlocked and let himself in. Perhaps an object caught his eye. A piece of silver maybe. He was short of cash. He thought why not? And then he decided to go the whole hog and raid our silver collection. He knew it to be a valuable one because my father had shown it to him.”

  “Was it likely that Mr. Halsted would be short of money?” Daniel asked. “I understood that his family was most indulgent to him. I also understood that he did not possess any kind of firearm.”

  Harry shook his head violently. “I don’t know. I just don’t know. I’ve been going out of my mind trying to make sense of the whole thing. Halsted was a good friend and I would have said a trusted friend. It simply wasn’t like him to behave in this despicable way. But then maybe he had taken something that altered his personality.”

  “Taken something?” Daniel asked quickly. “Drugs, you mean? Halsted took drugs?”

  “Not on a regular basis. Good God no. But he did like to experiment and try new things. I know he had tried cocaine and opium before now, because he told me. If there was some drug that can completely alter the personality, then maybe that is the answer.”

  “I know of no such drug,” Daniel said. “I know of drugs that will give a person courage and maybe cause the lines between right and wrong to blur, but nothing that will change the true nature—in spite of what that writer Robert Stevenson would have us believe with his Jekyll and Hyde.”

  “Then I don’t know what else to say,” Harry said. “We understand from the police that this has not been the only robbery around here. Just that very day an attempt had been made to rob a bank in New Haven and it has been suggested that the same person carried out all of these foul acts because a bank employee was shot and the bullet was identical.”

  “And do you think that could have been your friend?”

  Harry shrugged. “He loved excitement. You heard about the time he won a bet to walk across the library roof? He took great risks when he was riding and he drove and rode like the devil. So who is to say that he didn’t feed his craving with daring acts of robbery?”

  “But violence? His aunt describes him as a gentle boy.”

  Harry thought for a minute, then nodded. “I should not have believed it possible that he is a cold-blooded killer. But there seems no other logical explanation.”

  “We hope to get to the truth, Mr. Silverton,” Daniel said. He put a hand on my shoulder.

  “Mr. Silverton,” I said. “You said it was a dark night. Could you swear that the vehicle you saw driving away that night belonged to Mr. Halsted?”

  “I didn’t see the driver but the automobile certainly looked exactly like the one Halsted had proudly shown me only a week or so earlier. And it’s not even in general production yet. I’d swear to that in court. And they found our silver mustard pot under the seat, remember. How the devil did that get there if he wasn’t to blame?”

  We stared at each other for a while, then I sighed. “We are going to get to the bottom of this, I promise you. We’re going to find JJ Halsted and learn the truth.”

  “Then I wish you luck,” he said. “Nothing would please me more than to find my friend not guilty of this awful crime, but I fear I am already convinced there is no other explanation.”

  He led us toward the front door and watched as we went down the front steps. The cabby was waiting for us out in the street and it had started to snow.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The snow held off until we had reached the station, but as the train pulled out on its journey back to New York it started to fall in earnest, the white flakes swirling around the train windows.

  “I hope we’re not trapped in a blizzard,” I said, peering out into the grayness.

  “We should be back before enough snow can pile up to stop trains from running,” Daniel said shortly.

  He had hardly said a word all the way back from the Silver-ton house. I had decided he must be considering various possibilities in the case but now I looked up at him with concern.

  “Daniel, is something upset
ting you?” I asked. “Something I’ve said or done?”

  He sighed then blurted out, “Molly, you must stop introducing me as Captain Sullivan. It’s not right and it’s deceptive.”

  “But you are Captain Sullivan.”

  “Not at the moment.”

  “You know it’s only a matter of time before you are reinstated. You’ve done nothing wrong, for heaven’s sake.”

  “I set up an illegal prize fight.”

  “That half the police force attended.”

  “Nevertheless, if anyone wanted to find an excuse to get rid of me, it was still illegal.”

  “Why would anyone want to get rid of you? Your colleagues all think highly of you. It will all be sorted out soon.”

  “I hope so,” he said. “And until I am reinstated, I am not Captain Sullivan.”

  “Very well.” I frowned. “You’re very touchy tonight.”

  “I suppose I am. It has to do with the frustration I’m feeling. Being part of this case is only reminding me what I’ve been missing out on all this time. Cases I could have helped solve. And all the current trouble with the gangs. I’m one of the few cops who could do something about that. I think we may be in for a gang war, from what I hear. I know there was a big Italian gang funeral only the other day in the city. Black-plumed horses, bands, and the show. Makes me wonder who dared to bump off a gang member. And I can do nothing.” He slammed his fists together.

  “You can help solve this particular case,” I said. “I’d certainly value your skills because I’m stumped.”

  He nodded. “It’s one devil of a puzzle, isn’t it? I can’t believe that Halsted committed those crimes, but then I know that not many people own a brand-new automobile like that, especially not in a small town like New Haven. And if he’s really in the clear, then where the devil is he?”

  “I wish I knew,” I said.

  “I’ll try and get my hands on an automobile,” he said. “I hope I still have a few remaining well-connected friends. We should see for ourselves where the vehicle went off the road and see if anyone encountered Halsted after the crash. Although I’m sure the police will already have carried out a thorough investigation.”