by Amy Stewart
“Are you suggesting that the Morris Plains asylum is incapable of holding on to the lunatics we send over there? Because if that’s the case, I’ll turn down every request you send me from here on and let you keep them in that nice new jail of yours. And I’ll be sure to let the state authorities know that the sheriff of Bergen County has misgivings about the security at the asylum. They can send you up to Morris Plains to tell them exactly where they’re going wrong. Would you like that, Bob?”
Sheriff Heath sighed. “No, Your Honor. I think they do a fine job up there. It’s just that this is an unusual case.”
“Thank you for telling me, Sheriff. I hadn’t noticed.”
29
DR. OGDEN WAS DELAYED in getting to the courthouse because a boy had been kicked by a goat and it looked as though he might lose an eye. It took another hour to calm the boy and do something about the eye. Once he arrived, there was yet another delay as Baron von Matthesius pretended to be comatose and could not be roused. It took a bucket of ice water, brought in under absolute silence so as not to alert the inmate and give him time to brace himself against shock, to bring him, shrieking, to his feet.
By the time he was alert and delivered back into the courtroom, I was supposed to have left for Fleurette’s Christmas pageant. I had been conscripted into pouring punch in the lobby before the show.
“All the other girls have mothers,” she’d pleaded, looking up at me with enormous liquid eyes. “They’ve all made tarts and cookies to raise money for next year’s costumes. I don’t have anyone to make tarts for me.”
“You poor creature.” I lowered myself to the divan and stroked her hair. “Was Bessie truly too busy to bake anything at all for you?” Our brother’s wife was the only member of the family to be trusted with a pie.
She giggled and punched me in the ribs, which hadn’t entirely healed. “All you have to do is pour the punch! You don’t even have to make the punch. Just stand there and put it into cups. Do you think you can do that?”
“I suppose I could,” I said, still trying to think of a reason why I couldn’t.
“And don’t tell me you’ll be needed at the jail. I’ll speak to Sheriff Heath myself. He’ll force you to go. You know he does anything I ask him to do.”
“Sheriff Heath is not as charmed by you as you might believe. He’s cordial to everyone, even to girls who make unreasonable demands.”
In the end, though, I agreed to be there. Fleurette also invited Sheriff and Mrs. Heath, and Deputy and Mrs. Morris. It was because of this invitation that Sheriff Heath sent me out of the courtroom just as von Matthesius was being brought in.
“Go and attend to your punch bowl,” he whispered as the proceedings were about to begin.
“Now? I couldn’t possibly.”
“We all have our duties.”
“Won’t you need me to testify?”
“I’ll be the only one called to speak. It won’t make a difference anyway. The judge was impressed by his performance, and you know as well as I do that von Matthesius will pull one trick after another in this courtroom until he gets what he wants. Go on before you get us both into trouble with Miss Fleurette. I’ll be there when I can.”
I had no choice but to slip out of the courtroom just as Baron von Matthesius was being wheeled in by his attorney, with a dour-faced Dr. Ogden following behind.
“THERE YOU ARE!” Fleurette shrieked, and ran across the lobby to meet me. I’d been instructed to arrive an hour before the first ticket holders would be admitted. The lobby was empty save for a few women setting out trays on a table. Fleurette wore a red velvet dress with the sheer sleeves she favored in winter and summer.
“We don’t have much time,” she said, skidding to a stop in front of me. “Let’s get you dressed.”
“I’m already dressed.” Even as I said it I knew that I’d been trapped.
She took my hand and led me down the stark narrow hallway past the backstage entrance, where the younger children were already gathering behind the curtain and practicing their dance steps. She backed into a dressing room, tugging at both of my hands, bouncing up and down on her toes in that gleeful manner of hers.
“Give me your hat,” she demanded, and I surrendered. What choice did I have?
Fleurette had managed to get hold of a length of Chinese pongee silk dyed a deep wine red, and had sewn a walking suit and duster set with a wide and handsome collar, fabric-covered buttons, a perfectly tailored cummerbund, and embroidered cuffs. There was a single pleat down the front and a piece of braid joining several pleats in the back. The duster slid over it and buttoned off to the side, which Fleurette assured me was very much in style.
It was, I had to admit, an extraordinary piece of work. No dress had ever fitted me so well. “I left out the bone stays,” she said as she buttoned the bodice around me. “You can breathe in it.”
I took a deep breath and the dress expanded to precisely the girth of my rib cage. “It really is fine. Although I’m not sure I would’ve chosen red . . .”
“Don’t be ridiculous! You can’t go around in gray and tweed all the time. Just look at yourself.”
I turned to the mirror propped up on the dressing table. The red brought color into my cheeks and turned my eyes almost green, and the precise tailoring made me look—not slimmer, exactly, but better proportioned. The silk rustled agreeably when I moved.
Fleurette put her arm around my waist and leaned against me. We made a comical sight in the mirror, a tall and matronly woman in a handsome tailored suit alongside a young girl in greasepaint.
I had no choice but to submit to her hairstyling efforts as well, so I was wearing an elaborate top-knot with a ribbon woven through it that hardly felt like it would hold. I would have to pour punch with my chin held very still for fear that it would all come tumbling down at once.
THE LINE FOR PUNCH was surprisingly orderly. The mothers of the other girls had done this sort of thing before and knew that the crowd should be made to pass by a long string of tables, each laden with sponge cakes and jelly rolls, almond creams and stuffed dates, Scottish fancies and marguerites. The time it took to choose from among them slowed them considerably, and they arrived at my punch table in measured doses so that I could handle them on my own. I had assumed that Norma would also work at the punch bowl, but she announced that she would arrive at her leisure and take a seat, which was exactly what she did.
“Look at you!” a familiar voice called as I was bent down behind my table to pick up another tray of cups. It was Bessie, with an arm around each of her children. The three of them looked me up and down in shock.
“What happened to you?” little Frankie asked.
“Are you going to be in the show?” Lorraine asked.
Bessie gave them each a shove. “Hush! You’ve just never seen your aunt Constance dressed for the theater before.” She grinned at me and stepped to the side so I could keep pouring punch for the crowd. “Did Fleurette make it?” she whispered. “She must have. She did your hair, too.”
“She did.”
“It’s perfect for you,” Bessie said. “Only I don’t know how she talked you into it.”
“I wasn’t talked into anything. It was forced upon me.”
“Well, it suits you.”
We were called to the theater just as my punch bowl emptied. My brother ran in at the last minute, having come directly from work. I filed in with the rest of the crowd and took my seat next to him and Bessie and the children. Norma sat next to me and on the other side we had places reserved for the Heaths and Morrises, but by the time the lights dimmed they still hadn’t arrived.
“Is something wrong at the jail?” Norma whispered.
I shook my head. “Just more nonsense with von Matthesius.”
The curtain parted and revealed a stage decorated to resemble a medieval castle, with stonework painted on a backdrop and tapestries draped from the walls. The lady and lord of the castle—as portrayed by Helen Stewart and
an older boy I didn’t know—sat in high-backed chairs as the rest of their court filed in. There were ladies-in-waiting arranged around Helen like a chorus, Fleurette among them. The boys, dressed in tunics and tights, marched in carrying drums, zithers, bells, and trumpets.
“It’s going to be a noisy evening,” Norma whispered.
And it was, with a dogged pianist driving the raucous young musicians through performances of “Over the Hills of Bethlehem” and “When from the East the Wise Men Came.” Each song was accompanied by the arrival of still more members of the troupe, first bearing a yule log, then a boar’s head (which was made of some sort of pink leather and, thanks to Fleurette’s efforts, appallingly lifelike), then, at last, a wassail bowl and the entrance of Father Christmas.
I was still suffering from the aftermath of my wrestling match with von Matthesius. I shifted in my chair and tried to stretch my legs to ease the pain in my knee. All of this twisting and sighing annoyed Norma so much that she elbowed me in the ribs, which resurrected another ache and made it even more difficult to sit still.
I was about to give up and go stand in the back of the theater when Sheriff Heath slid into the seat next to me. He was still in his everyday worsted suit, which suggested he hadn’t had time to go home and change for the evening. Mrs. Heath and the children must have been waiting for him, wondering when their Christmas Eve would begin. I started to tell him that he should have left me waiting and gone home to them, but it was impossible to think of anything but von Matthesius.
“What happened?” I asked, even though the answer was already sinking like a stone inside of me.
He watched the children perform an awkward little dance that involved holding hands and doing something like a waltz in a circle. The older ones had practiced and did their parts with a kind of wooden precision, but the younger children abandoned any attempt at following the steps and just hopped up and down, grinning broadly at the audience. Laughter and applause went around the room, and while it did, Sheriff Heath leaned over and said, “Judge Seufert ordered the Baron to Morris Plains. I sent him there straight away. I don’t want to see him again.”
“Surely he didn’t give credence to a criminal over Dr. Ogden and the rest of us?”
Norma kicked me and leaned over to glare pointedly at Sheriff Heath. We sat quietly until the trumpets burst into a chorus and then he said, “He babbled like an idiot when they brought him back in, and then he stripped off almost every stitch of clothing right in front of the judge. We all stood up and said it was an act, but how do you prove that a man is sane when he’s acting insane?”
There was an enthusiastic round of applause following the trumpets. I couldn’t bring myself to join in.
“He’ll break out within a week,” I said.
“I know. But it’ll be their fault if he runs this time, and their job to bring him back.”
I shut my eyes against the image of the nurse or orderly or guard who would be the next to take the blame for von Matthesius’s escape. I’d been trying to absolve myself of responsibility, but in fact I was only passing it on. If he succeeded again—and I had no doubt that he would—the failings and missteps that allowed him to get away would belong to someone else and would haunt them the way I was haunted.
“And what are we to do?” I whispered to the sheriff.
He gave me the smallest smile and nudged my arm with his.
“We go back to work, Deputy.”
The lights came down on the stage and a little girl of about ten stepped into the spotlight to sing the first lines of “It Came upon the Midnight Clear.” The other girls gathered in a semi-circle and hummed behind her. She was a perfect angel of a child, her hair smoothed into black ringlets and topped with a red velvet bow. She reminded me of Fleurette at that age. Norma must’ve been thinking the same thing, because she glanced over at me and smiled a little.
Beatrice Fuller could have stood among those girls only a few years ago. Even Providencia Monafo had been this young once, and she might have sung with the other girls at Christmastime just like this. All the women under my care—the pickpockets, the arsonists, the runaways—each one of them had been these girls, or some version of them.
Every girl stepped up to take her part. Helen sang the third verse.
Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel-strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong.
Then Fleurette stood next to her and took the rest of the verse. She sang clearly and confidently, with a quiet humility I hadn’t often seen in her. The first line came with such tenderness that it seemed as if it was meant for each one of us. Sheriff Heath sighed and sank deeper into his chair.
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love-song which they bring.
I closed my eyes and pictured Baron von Matthesius settling in for his first night of sleep in one of the long, cold dormitories at the Morris Plains asylum. He would’ve already taken note of the windows and the doors, and he would be awake now, listening to the footfalls of the nurses, memorizing their routes on the night watch.
But Fleurette’s voice banished the criminals and lunatics from my mind, if only for one night.
O hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing.
Constance Kopp, 1915. This photograph accompanied newspaper stories about the von Matthesius case.
Ithaca Daily News, December 22, 1915, evening edition
Historical Notes, Sources, and Acknowledgments
AS WITH THE FIRST BOOK in the series, Girl Waits with Gun, this novel is based on actual events and people, but it is a work of fiction, populated by fictional characters inspired by their real-life counterparts. This time, the title does not come from a real-life headline about Constance, but is inspired by several real-life headlines from the era about women in law enforcement.
According to newspaper reports, Constance Kopp was asked by Sheriff Heath to help find the escaped prisoner Dr. von Matthesius, but she was not actually responsible for his escape. At the time, she was not yet a deputy. I don’t know exactly why she hadn’t been hired on officially. It really was true that New Jersey had only just recently passed a law allowing women to serve as police officers, and the law did not mention deputy sheriffs. It’s also true that the sheriff of New York County tried to hire women deputies in 1912, but was prevented from doing so because the law required that deputies be eligible to vote. That law remained in place and became irrelevant when women in New York won the right to vote in 1917.
Regardless, Constance did prove herself to Sheriff Heath through her work on the von Matthesius case. She really did arrest Felix, although I don’t know the exact details of the arrest. In real life, Felix’s son Hans was also arrested in connection with the case. All of the troubles Sheriff Heath faced—the dentistry bills for inmates, the possibility of serving jail time for the escape—were reported in the newspapers as I have described them.
The police in New York did call the sheriff several times, believing they had captured the fugitive when in fact they had the wrong man. And Sheriff Heath and Constance really did work with Reverend Weber to send a letter via general delivery. Reinhold Dietz and Rudy Schilga were real people who played more or less the same roles described here. The last night of the hunt and the capture of von Matthesius happened almost exactly as described. Von Matthesius was, in fact, sentenced to the Morris Plains Insane Asylum (later called Greystone), but in real life his sentencing did not happen until April 1916.
I never have discovered the exact nature of von Matthesius’s crimes. Beatrice Fuller and Dr. Rathburn are fictional characters, but the three boys who reported him actually were named Louis Burkhart, Frederick Shipper, and Alfonso Youngman. I know nothing more about their real lives, so everything but their names is fiction.
The character of Henri LaMotte is fictional, although there really were photographers who specialized in
collecting evidence. Also fictional are the women Constance met in New York: Geraldine, Carrie, and Ruth. The Mandarin Hotel is based on many similar hotels for women that existed in New York at the time. (If Constance had stayed in a hotel that also served men, she would have gone in through a separate women’s entrance, aimed at protecting women against even the suspicion of impropriety.)
Providencia Monafo really did shoot her boarder Saverio Salino, but the bit about aiming for her husband, and wanting to stay in jail for protection from him, is fiction. Also, in real life, her crime occurred a few months earlier than it does in this novel.
Many other small details are true to actual events, as you’ll see from the list of citations that follow. Grayce van Horn really was Sheriff Heath’s maid and was frightened by a prisoner, although that prisoner was not von Matthesius. Murray’s was a fantastic and highly theatrical restaurant near Times Square, where packages of a very interesting nature were sometimes exchanged in the cloakroom. The general delivery plan really was almost canceled by the post office because women were using it to send illicit correspondence to their lovers. Ida Higgins’s fictional story illustrates a forgotten fact about those days: witnesses were often held in jail just like the criminals they were expected to testify against. For more on this topic, I highly recommend Carolyn B. Ramsey’s excellent article “In the Sweat Box: A Historical Perspective on the Detention of Material Witnesses,” Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law 6, no. 2 (2009): 681.
And poetry lovers may recognize Dr. Williams. William Carlos Williams lived in Rutherford in those days and practiced medicine from his house overlooking Park Avenue. He was involved in all sorts of public health issues at the time. One of the great joys of reading through newspapers on microfilm from those days is to come across a letter to the editor from Dr. W. C. Williams, advocating for some improvement to local health care. I have no reason to believe that he knew Dr. von Matthesius or Constance Kopp, but it’s at least possible that he did. I urge you to read his book The Doctor Stories if you’d like to know more about what his medical practice might have been like.
