MURDER AT BERTRAM'S BOWER

by Cynthia Peale

  She drew a ragged breath, and when she spoke again it was haltingly, as if she were having to force out the words. “Matron came to wake me at once, of course. She said he wanted me to go with him. He would not tell her why, but somehow I knew it was some terrible trouble.

  “I dressed as quickly as I could, and we hurried over toward Warren Avenue. As I came near, I saw three or four carriages—police vehicles, and a long black wagon. There were lanterns and torches, so that the place was brightly lighted. Over and over again, I asked Officer Flynn why he had come for me, but he would not tell me. Yet all the while, I knew—not that it was Mary, but that it was one of our girls, and some harm had come to her.”

  Her voice broke then, and with a great shudder she put her hands over her face while she choked back her sobs.

  Caroline made small soothing noises to comfort her, and MacKenzie waited, uncomfortable as men always were in the presence of women’s tears. Perhaps she should not go on, he thought, but as it was not his place to suggest it, he trusted in Caroline’s judgment as to how much more emotional turmoil her friend might be able to endure.

  Miss Montgomery, somewhat recovered, went on: “There was a crowd gathered at the entrance to the alley behind West Brookline Street. When I reached it, I saw another little group halfway down, four or five men and something lying on the ground. It was covered with some dark drapery, a blanket perhaps. When I approached the men, one of them spoke to me and introduced himself as Inspector Crippen.”

  “Yes,” Caroline interjected. “I know him.”

  “You do?” Miss Montgomery seemed momentarily surprised—startled out of her grim recital.

  “Yes. My brother—but never mind that. Go on. You were in the alley with the police?”

  “Yes. It seemed that I had been summoned because a body—and that is what it was, a body—had been discovered by Officer Flynn. At first he thought it was a bundle of rags, but then he saw a shoe protruding and he realized it was the body of a woman. He recognized her as one of our girls. So he sent for help, and they told him to fetch me to give positive identification.”

  Her voice trailed off, and for a moment her face went slack with the memory of what she had seen. Caroline pictured it: the dark, the rain, torches and lanterns flickering in the raw night wind, the little circle of men’s faces peering down at the girl’s body. And poor Agatha, called out on such a dreadful errand …

  “She had been badly cut up,” Miss Montgomery went on. “Her dress was slashed to ribbons. Underneath it I could see her terrible wounds. The rain had washed away her blood, but the puddles by her side were dark with it. I never thought a human body could contain so much blood. Oh, it was horrible! Horrible! That poor girl! She didn’t have an enemy in the world. Unless it was someone from the streets she came from, someone from her past. Or—some madman.” Piteously, she looked at Caroline. “Yes, it must have been that. Some madman. Some lunatic, killing poor Mary and not even knowing who she was.”

  “Obviously, anyone who would commit such a crime—such a savage crime—was not in command of his faculties,” Caroline replied. She did not want to seem callous, but—“Agatha, do you have any idea why Mary went out last night?”

  “No. None.”

  “It is very odd, don’t you think? Since she had said she would work in the office, and she was such a dependable girl?”

  “Yes. It is odd. I can’t think why—”

  “And Miss Cox never mentioned that Mary had gone out?”

  “No. She had the girls in Bible study”—a weekly undertaking, Caroline knew, mandatory for all residents but not, apparently, for Mary—“and when she left, she would have seen that the office light was not on, and she would have thought—just as I did—that Mary had finished her work and gone to bed.”

  Caroline cast a warning glance at MacKenzie. She didn’t want him tattling to Addington about what she intended to say next.

  “Agatha, perhaps we can help you. To find out why Mary left. To talk to the girls, perhaps, and ask—”

  “No.” Suddenly Miss Montgomery stopped weeping. She made a final swipe at her reddened eyes, blinked rapidly, and took a deep breath. “No, Caroline, it was more than kind of you to come, but you have your own affairs to tend to. The police will manage well enough, I imagine.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “No. I insist. You must not trouble yourself anymore.” She stood and walked to the window, moving stiffly, as if her bones ached, thought MacKenzie. In her dark, shapeless dress, lacking a bustle or nipped-in waist, lacking any kind of ornament, she seemed even taller, more gaunt than before. “It is still raining hard,” she said. “I will send one of the girls to fetch a herdic for you.”

  “Then at least come to us for the night,” Caroline persisted. “It would be no trouble at all. We could put you on the fourth floor and we have the elevator so you will be spared the stairs—”

  “No.” Miss Montgomery turned to face them, and now MacKenzie saw what he had not seen before, the strong-minded female who had brought this place—this refuge for fallen women—into being. “No,” she repeated less vehemently. “You must go home, and I—I must deal with matters here.”

  Caroline made one last try. “Surely Mrs. Pratt can deal with any emergency—any further emergency—and she can send a telegram to you at our house if you should be needed.”

  “You do not subscribe to the telephone?”

  “No. We have talked about it, but—no, we do not.” So far, Ames had won, and a subscription had not been taken.

  “Well, then,” said Miss Montgomery, as if that settled the matter: If the Ameses had no telephone, she could not possibly stay with them. With somber courtesy, she held out her hand to MacKenzie. “Good day to you, Doctor,” she said. And to Caroline: “You have been more than kind to come. But now, if you will excuse me, I must see to my girls.”

  MacKenzie’s shattered knee, operated on in late September, had healed well until November, when his recuperation had had a temporary setback in the business of the death of Colonel Mann. Now, in January, he still occasionally awoke in the morning to find that his knee had stiffened, making it difficult to navigate the stairs.

  On those days he went down to breakfast in the elevator. Like all machinery, it made its own peculiar noises. He had come to expect them whenever he stepped in and pushed the brass handle either right or left, depending on whether he wanted to go up or down. Now, on the morning after his visit to Bertram’s Bower, when he pulled shut the grille and grasped the handle to push it to the left, down, there was a heart-stopping pause—a hesitation that had never happened before. He was just about to let go of the handle and step out, when the elevator started its descent. But its soft moan and wheeze sounded different this day: more strained, somehow.

  Nevertheless, since he had started to go down, he had to keep his grip on the handle or he would stop between floors. So down he went, past the second floor, where he could have alighted had he had second sight.

  When the cab had just passed the second floor, the machinery shuddered to a stop. Here between floors it was gloomy despite the leaded glass skylight that topped the shaft; the cab’s brass grille all around allowed a little more light to come from the stairwell. Still, it was pretty dim.

  Worse, the elevator, great convenience though it was, was a space no bigger than four feet by four feet, and perhaps seven feet high. It was a small space to be confined in, particularly for someone like himself, who suffered from a mild form of claustrophobia.

  This is a pretty pickle, he thought. After a moment, not knowing what else to do, he called, “Ames! Are you there?”

  He heard Ames come out of the dining room and into the first floor hall. “Halloo! Was that you calling, Doctor?”

  MacKenzie could hear him clearly; had Ames been on the stairs, he could have seen him through the grille.

  “I’m afraid the thing has gotten stuck,” he called. “I’m not sure what to do.”

  “Don’t do any
thing! You might disrupt the machinery and go crashing down. Damn! Caro’s down in the kitchen with Cook. Just wait a minute—”

  It was Caroline who was the elevator expert, since she had had to learn the idiosyncrasies of the thing in the course of attending to her mother during that lady’s illness. She had given MacKenzie a thorough course of instruction not only on how to operate it but also on its little quirks.

  He tried to remember, now, precisely what she had said. “If you feel it start to shudder too badly” (he thought she’d said that) “you must grip the handle—so—and pull it neither left nor right but toward you. And if it starts to drop too quickly, push this button”—a large white ceramic thing above the lever with the word BRAKE embossed upon it. Installed next to it was what looked like an oversized red china doorknob that she had made no mention of, or if she had, he had forgotten what it was. “And if it stops altogether—I mean between floors, where it is not supposed to—then do—”

  What? He racked his brain. Her other instructions he thought he remembered, but this most crucial one he could not recall.

  He stood frozen in fear. What if the damnable thing dropped straight down to the basement, collapsing into a crumpled heap of brass and wood? He did not dare to touch either the handle-lever or the big white ceramic BRAKE button. He contemplated the large red—for emergencies?—knob, but he was even less inclined to touch that unknown. He could only stand stiffly, his knee throbbing, and wait for his rescue.

  “Hold on! Don’t panic!” called Ames. He was on the stairs now, right outside the cab. He himself never used the elevator; he didn’t trust it, and incidents like this only confirmed his suspicions. “We’ll have you out in no time. Are you all right?”

  MacKenzie said he was, although in truth he was not sure.

  “Good. Good. Now I am going to go down to the kitchen and fetch Caroline—ah! There she is now.”

  And he pounded down to the front hall, calling to his sister as he went.

  In a moment she was there, speaking to MacKenzie from the stairway; he could see her through the grille. She gave him the crucial instruction—the one he had forgotten—and in no more than a minute or two he was safely downstairs.

  “What a fright!” Caroline exclaimed as he emerged, shaken, from the elevator cab. “My dear Dr. MacKenzie! Such a dreadful experience! Thank goodness you don’t have a weak heart! I am going to write out all the instructions for every conceivable occurrence, and post them inside the elevator so this will never happen to you again.”

  Flexing his knee a bit, he assured her that no harm had been done, and they proceeded into the dining room. He heard the dumbwaiter thumping and creaking in the back hall, and then Margaret appeared bearing the breakfast tray. What he needed, he thought, was a cup of strong black coffee to repair his nerves; the oatmeal that was their standard fare except on Saturdays, when they had bacon and eggs, seemed singularly unappetizing just now.

  The morning Globe lay at Ames’s place at the head of the table, and MacKenzie could see a bold black headline. Now Ames picked it up, started to hand it to his sister, and then hesitated.

  She had seated herself and was pouring his tea. “Here you are, Addington. Why—what is it? What is wrong?”

  “More bad news for Miss Montgomery, I am afraid.”

  She put down the teapot and stared at him. “Oh, no. What is it?”

  “Another girl from the Bower has been killed. And in the same way.”

  “Oh, no.”

  MacKenzie thought he heard tears in her voice. For the moment she’d forgotten him, so he poured his own coffee. After a few sips, he felt much better.

  She put out her hand and Ames gave her the newspaper. Rapidly she scanned it, uttering little exclamations of dismay as she did so.

  “This is terrible, Addington.”

  “Did you know this girl?”

  “Bridget Brown. Yes. She was in my Thursday class. She was quiet, never offensive. In fact, we saw her yesterday afternoon. Do you remember, Doctor? She was the girl who wanted to speak to Agatha. I made her promise she wouldn’t leave the Bower after dark—and never alone. But she must have gone out, after all, and—” She broke off, trying to acknowledge to herself the horror of what had happened.

  Then: “Oh, poor Agatha! After all these years, when she has worked so hard to make the Bower a respectable place—”

  “It is not her fault that some madman is loose in the district, Caroline.”

  “No. Of course it isn’t. But you know how people are. After this, when they think of Bertram’s Bower they will think of these hideous crimes. They won’t stop to consider— Oh, Addington, this will be the ruination of the Bower! People will never support it if it is associated with scandal like this. Agatha will have to give it up, and all her years and years of good work will have been for nothing!”

  “From what you told me of your visit to her yesterday, she seems to be holding up fairly well.”

  “Yes, but that was before—before this second death.” She stared at him with anguished eyes.

  He put out his hand and she gave the newspaper back to him. Watching her across the table, MacKenzie could see that she was struggling to contain her tears. Absently, he began to pull at one end of his mustache, a habit he had when he was unnerved.

  At length, composing herself, she rose, helped herself to oatmeal, and returned to the table where, MacKenzie was glad to see, she began to eat. After a moment she said, “Addington.”

  “Yes?” He did not look up at her. According to the Globe’s account, Deputy Chief Inspector Elwood Crippen was assuring the public that the perpetrator of these atrocious crimes would soon be caught. People need have no fear for their safety, but in the meantime, while the hunt was on, he cautioned them, particularly females, to avoid walking alone at night in the South End.

  Crippen. He felt a little shiver of distaste as he called up into his mind’s eye the image of the officious little policeman. Caroline was right: Crippen would bungle this case for certain. Too quick to make an arrest, too quick to jump to unfounded conclusions …

  “Bridget Brown was Mary Flaherty’s roommate,” Caroline said.

  He looked up. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I said, ‘Bridget Brown was Mary Flaherty’s roommate.’ ”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure! Otherwise I wouldn’t say so. Don’t you think that is significant?”

  He thought about it. “It might be, yes.”

  “And what did she want to speak to Agatha about, I wonder.” Her face suddenly became animated. “Addington, we must help Agatha. Really we must.”

  He contemplated her from beneath his dark brows. His look was stern, but MacKenzie thought he saw in it some hint of apprehension.

  “And how are we to do that?”

  “I don’t know. How would I know? You can go to the Bower—go to Inspector Crippen, for that matter. Offer to help him.”

  “He does not look kindly on my help, Caro. You know that.”

  She waved her hand in irritation. “Nonsense. He is often mistaken, but he is not a fool. If you can save him from making a serious mistake—as you have done twice before—”

  “And do not forget Cousin Wainwright,” Ames added. That worthy, a cousin on their mother’s side, sat on the board of police commissioners. He was jealous of the authority of the police and did not welcome unasked-for assistance from outside the ranks.

  “Oh, Cousin Wainwright!” Caroline exclaimed. “He cannot possibly object to your talking to Inspector Crippen, or even visiting the Bower.”

  “Caroline, we cannot intrude ourselves into this case,” Ames said flatly. He handed the newspaper to MacKenzie and rose to get his oatmeal from the sideboard.

  His sister made no reply, but MacKenzie noted her rather alarming expression. Had he been asked to describe it, he would have said that it was one of mulish stubbornness. It did not quite fit with his image of her as the Angel of the Hearth, compliant always
to the wishes of her older brother.

  Ames returned to the table and began to eat. Caroline watched him for a moment, and then she said, “Remember Agatha’s father, Addington.”

  “What about him?”

  “Don’t you remember that our own papa thought very highly of him? They were friends for years.”

  “Yes. I know.”

  “And before Mr. Montgomery went bankrupt, I believe I am right when I say that one time he helped Papa through some business difficulty. I don’t know the details—Mama did not either, but she once told me—”

  “Caroline.” Ames had stopped eating, but he still held his spoon. “Listen to me.”

  “Yes, Addington, I am listening,” she said, but her expression did not change.

  “There have been two atrocious murders over in the South End. Both victims were residents of Bertram’s Bower. The police have begun their investigation. I have no doubt that soon enough they will find their man. You and I”—and here he spoke with unusual sternness—“have no business interfering.”

  “How can it be interfering, simply to—”

  “None,” he snapped. “As regrettable an affair as this is, it is none of ours. I would ask you to remember that.”

  For a moment she held his gaze; then she looked down at her half-eaten oatmeal congealing in its dish.

  “I have no time today or tomorrow,” she said at last, “because of my dinner party. I cannot even attend Sewing Circle this morning. But after tomorrow evening I will be free to—”

  “Don’t say it,” he warned, scowling at her.

  “I will say it. Agatha is my friend. I have known her all my life. I work at the Bower two afternoons a month, as I have done ever since she started it. I have watched her build the Bower from a rented apartment into that entire house, which they were able to buy because of her brother’s skill at fund-raising. That was a tremendous achievement, to buy that place. Think of it, Addington—think of how they have worked over the years. And now Agatha is in trouble. Through no fault of her own, but serious trouble all the same. What would you have me do? Turn my back on her? Refuse to help her?”