Murder in Burnt Orange

by Jeanne M. Dams

  Hilda did not flinch. “If I should have the baby before I can find out about all these terrible things, of course.”

  She was an experienced and competent liar.

  * * *

  She sought out Andy before she went to bed. He was settling in to his new room, carefully putting away his few belongings, making his bed with the clean linens Eileen had provided for him. “Are you all right, Andy? Is your mother happy with this arrangement?”

  Andy sighed. “Ma knew I’d be havin’ to get a better job soon, anyway, and it might mean leavin’ home. She told me to find out when I can have a day off to go and see her. It’s not me that’s askin’, miss,” he added hurriedly. “I don’t want you to think I’m wantin’ time off when I just got here. But Ma, she’s missin’ me already.”

  “You are very good to your mother, Andy. Of course she wants to see you as often as she can. But I think, for a little while, it would be better if you stay here all the time. Because—”

  “Yes, miss. Because there’s somebody out there wants to hurt me.” He tried hard to keep his voice from quivering, but he was only fourteen. He turned his head away.

  Hilda sat down on the bed. “Andy, I want you to think very carefully. Can you remember anything about that night at Mr. Black’s house, anything that would tell us about the man who killed Clancy? I know it is not something you want to remember, but it could be very important. You see,” she said, patting the bed beside her so Andy would also sit, “you see, Andy, I think all of these bad things are connected.”

  “Even the train wrecks, miss?”

  “Yes, even the train wrecks. And that means this is a big thing, a terrible thing. So finding the man who killed Clancy might mean finding the men who are planning wrecks and fires that might kill many more people.”

  Andy’s face became unreadable, blank. “Yes, miss,” he said. “But I don’t remember nothin’.”

  Hilda had seen that expression before, on Erik’s face when he had made up his mind not to do as he was told. She took his hand, but it lay passive under hers. “Please try to remember. Please try.”

  “Yes, miss. I think I’d better go to bed, miss. I gotta get up early to go to the store with Mr. Patrick.”

  The Hilda of several months ago might have pursued the matter. The Hilda who was soon to give birth was too tired, too hot, too—too everything. She patted the unresponsive hand and stood. “Yes, Andy. Sleep. We will talk again.”

  Hilda didn’t get to sleep until nearly dawn. She tried to find a comfortable position for sleep, and could not. She threw off the sheet and lay sweating with the fan turned directly on her. Then she started to shiver, and pulled the sheet up again, and began once more to try to figure out what to do about the intrigue in which she found herself entangled. When she finally did sleep, her dreams were troubled, and she woke to find herself as entangled in the sheet as in her problems.

  She also found herself alone. Patrick had given up in the middle of the night after being elbowed aside for the tenth time, and had sought rest in the spare room. Hilda lay for a few minutes trying to get back to sleep, but it was no use. Her back ached, she was hot and miserable, but there were duties to be done. As long as she couldn’t sleep anyway, she might as well get up and do them. This afternoon was the time appointed for the funeral of Clancy Malloy, an ordeal she dreaded, but she had to face it. She sat up far enough to reach the bell, and rang for Eileen.

  Eileen was serving breakfast, with the help of Andy. She didn’t really need help serving one person, but Andy had risen early, eager to begin his new duties, and Patrick had decided it wouldn’t hurt him to be trained to wait at table. Eileen was enjoying bossing Andy, who put up with it stoically, but when Hilda’s bell rang, Patrick looked at Eileen and said, “You’d better go. Andy can finish here. I’m nearly done, anyway, and we need to be off.”

  He delayed long enough, however, to make sure nothing was wrong upstairs. He was not in the best of moods. In addition to his own apprehension about the funeral, he was irritable from the heat. Most of all, he was worried and irritated about Hilda’s continued insistence on pursuing this course of action. But Hilda was his wife and the child she carried in such discomfort was his child, and under his irritation he loved them both. He paced in the hall until Eileen reassured him that Hilda merely wanted help getting out of bed and washing, and that no crisis was yet at hand. Then he and Andy set off for the store in the carriage. Patrick preferred to walk unless the weather was impossible, but now that he was temporarily in charge, Aunt Molly had tactfully suggested that the carriage was more dignified. “Uncle Dan walks to the store a lot of the time,” he had said. “Mr. Malloy,” replied Aunt Molly, “has no need to demonstrate his position.”

  Dan Malloy, as Patrick very well knew, was a lively Irishman to whom decorum had not always been a primary concern, especially when he was involved in politics. But he wasn’t in politics anymore, nor was he lively right now. This was not a time to argue the point. Patrick conceded, and used the carriage.

  There was another good reason for the carriage now, of course. Andy was better protected in a carriage than out on the street.

  The streets were quiet as they clopped along. Although it was still early, with few people yet stirring, the heat and humidity were already nearly unbearable. “I’ve never known a summer like this one,” said Patrick, wiping his brow. He carried a spare collar in a small bag Eileen had given him. The one he had put on when he dressed would be wilted before the morning was half over.

  “Yessir, it’s been a hot one, all right. Wish somebody’d work out a way to keep a place cool in the summer the way you can keep it warm in the winter. If you’re rich, you can, anyways.”

  “Seems to me I’ve heard somebody’s workin’ on it. Not sure it’d be healthy, though, steppin’ from an ice box of a house to a steam bath outside. Andy, what do you know about Clancy’s murder?”

  The boy’s mouth had been open for a further comment on the weather. He shut it firmly and looked at his hands.

  “Ah. Then you do know somethin’ and just don’t want to tell.”

  Andy remained stubbornly silent.

  “Want me to tell you why you’ve shut up like a clam all of a sudden, me boy?”

  Andy lifted his eyes and instantly lowered them again.

  “I reckon,” said Patrick deliberately, “it’s because you’re scared silly. Scared for your skin.”

  “No! It’s not for me! I’m—” He stopped.

  “I know, Andy. I had to make you say it. It’s not your own skin you’re worried about. You’re no coward. Whose, then? Your family? Your friends?”

  “No! I mean, yes, everybody—but mostly you and Miss Hilda. Mrs. Cavanaugh.”

  “ ‘Miss Hilda’ is fine. And I’m Mr. Patrick, except at the store—I have to be Mr. Cavanaugh there. Now, why are you so ’specially afraid for the two of us?”

  “I’ve heard those men talk, sir! I’ve seen ’em. You don’t know what they’re like! Most people are just—ordinary, y’know? I see all kinds of people at the hotel, the rich ones who come to stay or to eat, and the poor ones who wait on ’em. And some are nice and some aren’t, and some are smart and some aren’t, but they’re mostly just ordinary people, not saints, not devils. But these men—they’re bad. I don’t mean they’re not nice. They’re not, but it’s worse than that. They’re mean, and they like it. You can tell by the way they talk. And I saw one of ’em once—” He swallowed and went on. “He was walkin’ away from the hotel, and there was a kitten on the sidewalk. Lots o’ stray cats hang around the hotel—the cook gives ’em scraps and they get kinda tame. So this one—it was real cute, and real friendly, and this man was walkin’ slow, talkin’ to somebody else, so the kitten came over to get petted, or maybe to get a hand-out, and he—he kicked it. Not just pushed it out of the way, I don’t mean, but kicked it, hard, so hard it went flyin’ up against the wall and—” Andy swallowed again, two or three times. When he went on his voice was r
ough. “And he never even went over to see if it was bad hurt. He laughed and said somethin’ to the other man, and just walked on.” After he got his voice under control, Andy said, “I took it home and buried it.”

  Patrick felt a little sick. He liked cats.

  Mr. O’Rourke pulled the carriage up to the back entrance of Malloy’s.

  “Andy, we have to stop talkin’ about this now. But before we go in, tell me: who was this man?”

  “I don’t know, sir, and that’s the truth, cross my heart. But he’s one of the ones who was talkin’ about the railroad men, and like I told Miss Hilda, I think he’s in on—on whatever it is, and now do you understand why I don’t want Miss Hilda to have nothin’ to do with this?”

  Patrick nodded and took Andy in to introduce him to the head floorwalker, the man who would be his boss.

  22

  Every political good carried to the extreme must be productive of evil.

  —Mary Wollstonecraft, The French Revolution, 1794

  Hilda had barely finished her cool sponge bath and dressed in her coolest clothes, when Eileen announced a caller. “It’s your brother, ma’am.”

  “Erik? So early?”

  “Your brother Sven, ma’am.” She pronounced it more like Swen. An Irish tongue can find Swedish names difficult.

  Hilda didn’t hurry downstairs. Hurrying was not easy for her these days, and it was too hot. But she didn’t waste time. It was too soon for Sven to have found out anything about Vanderhoof, but...

  “My sister.” He greeted her formally, taking both her hands and kissing her on the cheek. He looked cool and rested. Hilda wondered resentfully how he did it.

  “There is coffee, I think,” she said. “Me, I do not want any. It is too hot.”

  “I have had my breakfast,” he said, “and I must get to work. But I wanted to tell you something.” He looked around. Eileen was in the upstairs hallway, near the stairs. She was not obviously listening, but... “It is private, Hilda.”

  “Then come into the parlor and sit down.” She closed the pocket doors behind them. It made the room even stuffier, but Hilda was so uncomfortable, she thought a little more discomfort didn’t matter much. “What is it?”

  “I have remembered something.” He had switched to Swedish. “You asked me to find out what I could about Mr. Vanderhoof, what he did after he left South Bend in disgrace.”

  “But he was not in disgrace! That is what made me so angry. One of the things. He caused a man to be killed, and he ruined Clancy, and nothing happened to him at all.”

  “Please, Hilda, do not interrupt. I have little time. I thought, last night, about what you had asked, and decided that you had good reason to want to know. So I thought about who might be able to tell me about him, and I remembered some things that people were saying just after he left the city.”

  Hilda opened her mouth, thought better of it, and closed it again.

  “I do not know if this is true, but it was being said then that Mr. Vanderhoof left the city, and the country, but that he came back very soon to New York. That is where he lived before he came here. And it was said that he became active in New York politics. Not, people said, the honest circles of New York politics.”

  Hilda’s eyes widened. “Tammany Hall?” she whispered.

  “That is what men at the factory were saying. Again I say, I do not know if it was true.”

  “But you will try to find out?”

  “I will try. My sister, you will be careful?”

  “I will take care.” She put her hands protectively on her belly. “Of both of us.”

  Tammany Hall! Hilda felt cold. She saw Sven out and then went to the dining room and asked for coffee. “Lots of coffee, please, Eileen. And bacon and eggs. And toast.” She needed comfort. Tammany Hall!

  It was a name to produce anxiety and disgust. The notoriously corrupt political machine had run New York for decades, and it was whispered that there was almost nothing they would not do to keep their grip on their power and influence. It was lucrative power, public money being siphoned into private pockets in amounts that staggered the imagination.

  But there was the other side of Tammany Hall, too, the benevolent side. Tammany politicians had gained much of their popularity by helping New York’s poor. They aided the immigrants to find housing and work, and guided them to citizenship. True, they did it (quite openly) to secure their votes, but they did it. The politicians gave the poor feasts on holidays and provided free entertainment and saw to it that the children had shoes. And if their charity came out of pockets that had been lined with graft and corruption, those at the receiving end couldn’t afford to care much. They shrugged and assumed those being robbed in this redistribution of wealth could afford it.

  As Hilda’s panicked reaction faded and she thought about Sven’s information a bit more carefully, she was puzzled. Mr. Vanderhoof was a politician, certainly, but he was a Republican. Tammany Hall was aggressively Democratic. Mr. Vanderhoof had nothing but contempt for immigrants, as Hilda and her family had discovered when he defrauded them.

  Why would he involved with Tammany Hall? How would he have gained entrance into those tightly controlled circles? Hilda was no expert on politics, but back when she had read the newspapers every day, she had learned a lot about the ways that dishonest politicians could manipulate affairs. Even discounting half of what was said in the South Bend Tribune, as Republican a paper as ever rolled off a press, she was sure that New York politicians, if crooked, were not stupid. They were extremely careful about who was admitted into their confidence.

  Mr. Vanderhoof and Tammany. “No,” said Hilda aloud.

  “Ma’am?” said Eileen, startled. “Is somethin’ wrong, ma’am?”

  “Only in my head. I cannot understand... I think I must talk to Aunt Molly.”

  “You’ll see her this afternoon, ma’am. At the funeral.”

  Hilda had already pushed her chair back and stood, to go to the telephone in the hall. She sat back down. “Oh. I forgot for a moment. I do not like funerals.”

  “Nobody does, ma’am.”

  Hilda thought about it. “But I cannot go to the church, of course, and then at the cemetery there will be no chance to talk. It is not the time, anyway. Aunt Molly will be upset, and there will be many people. No one liked Clancy very much, but everyone likes Uncle Dan and Aunt Molly.”

  “Will there not be a gatherin’ at the house afterwards, then?” asked Eileen. She had little experience of funerals, but she knew about Irish wakes.

  “Not this time, I think. It will be a sad, quiet time, with Uncle Dan ill. Cousin Mary will be there to help comfort Aunt Molly, but I do not think she will want anyone else.”

  The telephone rang, and Eileen, looking troubled, trotted off to answer it. She was back in a moment.

  “It’s Mrs. Malloy, ma’am. She said to tell you nothin’s wrong, but she needs to speak to you.”

  Nothing’s wrong! Hilda could almost laugh. Almost every possible thing was wrong. But Molly presumably meant that Uncle Dan had not taken a turn for the worse. Hilda lumbered to the phone on the wall, leaned toward it, and picked up the ear piece. “Aunt Molly?”

  “Hilda, my dear, I know it’s terribly early, but I wanted to ask you and Patrick to come back to the house with us after—after it’s all over.” Her voice shook for only a moment. “It will only be the family, but if you’re feeling up to it, I’d like you to come.”

  Hilda hesitated. She needed to talk to Molly, but would there be any opportunity? And few ordeals could be worse than meeting members of an extended, and extensive, Irish family, especially in her condition. But—“I will come, Aunt Molly. And Patrick will come, of course. I will not look very nice.”

  “None of us will care how you look, child. It’s your company we want, not your dress.”

  Hilda made some reply, rang off, and hung the ear piece on the hook. She had wanted to ask Molly if there might be an opportunity to speak, alone, but she had not tho
ught it appropriate.

  Who else, then? Who else could give her the information she needed? Who else could give her an idea that might start her brain working?

  If she was looking into politics, she needed to talk to a politician. Uncle Dan was the only one she knew, and he was out of the question, at least for now.

  Patrick knew the mayor, but she did not, and even if she had, there were enough rumors about corruption in South Bend politics that she wasn’t about to talk to someone she didn’t “know and trust” as Aunt Molly had said.

  She knew and trusted her Pastor Borg, but he was, as Gudrun frequently said, “as innocent as a babe unborn.” He knew all about evil from reading about it in the Bible, but she seriously doubted if he had even as much personal experience with it as Hilda had, herself.

  Father Faherty, at St. Patrick’s? Hilda knew him, and trusted him, but though he might be slightly more worldly than her own pastor, the same objection held. She needed someone who had intimate acquaintance with wrongdoing, someone incorruptible who yet knew about corruption—

  Someone like an honest policeman.

  How could she get in touch with Sergeant Lefkowicz?

  A telephone call to the police station was out of the question. Not all the police in town were honest, and Hilda didn’t know for sure which were which.

  It was risky to send a message by Mr. O’Rourke. He knew too many people. Word might get around.

  She certainly couldn’t send Eileen. The police station was no place for a young girl.

  She could send John Bolton. He came to mind when she had thought of Eileen and the possible hazards to her virtue at the police station. John might be of slightly dubious morality, but his honesty had never been in question, nor his loyalty to Hilda.

  She went to the telephone. The butler at Tippecanoe Place would be displeased, but the time to worry about such small concerns was past.

  “Hello, is this Mr. Williams? This is Hilda Johansson. Hilda Cavanaugh, I mean. Yes, I am fine, thank you. Mr. Williams, I need to speak to John. Have they put the telephone in the carriage house yet? Oh, that is a pity. Yes, I know it must make much extra work for you. There is no hurry, but when you can, would you ask him to phone me? I cannot go out just now, you will understand. Thank you.”