MURDER AT BERTRAM'S BOWER

by Cynthia Peale

“What do you want?” Matron Pratt said abruptly, addressing Ames.

  “I want—if possible—to help.”

  She surveyed him for a moment, and he surveyed her back. “That’s what we try to do here,” she said. “We try to help. Them,” she added, casting her gaze upward; they took it to mean the young women housed on the upper floors.

  “Indeed,” Ames replied. He felt a fleeting moment of compassion—no more—for Elwood Crippen, forced to deal with this gorgon and not having the option, as Ames did, of walking away from her if she did not cooperate.

  But he would not walk away, he thought. The more this woman defied him, the more he wanted, perversely, to pry from her some small item of information; he would keep at her until he did.

  “And I am sure that you do help them,” he added.

  She glared at him. “The ones as want to be helped,” she said. “Some don’t.”

  “How do you mean?”

  She shrugged her massive shoulders, which were encased in a black dress of some cheap-looking stuff. “A lot of them just take advantage of her, if you ask me.” She meant Agatha Montgomery. “They know they can get fed, and get to a doctor if they need to—and most of ’em do, as you can imagine—and rest a bit from their labors, if you take my meaning. We give them a little vacation here, and then out they go, back where they came from, looking for men to make their living off of.”

  “You mean they do not take the employment that they might get after their—ah—lessons here?”

  She threw him a glance of contempt. “If a girl gets work in an office for four or five dollars a week, she won’t think that’s such a grand thing, will she? When she can make that much in a night—on her back.”

  MacKenzie had never heard a woman speak so crudely, and he was mightily offended by it. Ames, however, seemed not to notice—or, if he did, not to mind. “Yes, well, I take your point,” he said. “But about the two girls who—ah—Mary Flaherty and Bridget Brown?”

  Matron Pratt sniffed contemptuously. “Brown was humble enough. Never caused trouble. Did her work.”

  “And Mary Flaherty?”

  Instantly, a look of pure malice crossed the matron’s face. “I couldn’t say.”

  “Was she well liked?”

  “By some, I suppose.”

  “But not by you?”

  “I couldn’t say,” she repeated.

  “Try. Could you tell us anything about her?”

  “I’ve already told it all to the police.”

  “Even so.”

  Again the woman’s heavy shoulders rose in a shrug. “She was getting above herself.”

  “You mean because of her position as Miss Montgomery’s secretary?”

  “Yes. She gave herself airs.”

  “In what way?”

  “About the typewriting, for one thing.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “The Reverend Montgomery said he was going to buy a typewriting machine for the office. He bought her a manual so she could start to learn about it. And when she talked about it—and she did talk about it till you were sick of hearing her—it was always ‘When I get my typewriting machine.’ Like that. With her nose in the air, as if learning to pound away on one of them things was going to make her all of a sudden better than the rest of us.”

  Ames nodded. “So perhaps some of the girls resented her?”

  “Yes. ’Course they did.”

  “Did you?”

  It was a thrust that went home. Her mouth twitched, and she clenched her hands again.

  “It isn’t my place to resent any of the girls here.”

  He let it pass. “Was there anyone in particular who disliked either Mary or Bridget?”

  “Brown—no.”

  “But Mary Flaherty?”

  She frowned. They waited. She wants to tell us, thought MacKenzie, but she cannot quite bring herself to do so.

  “Verna Kent,” she said at last. “Miss Montgomery expelled her last week,” she added.

  “Because?”

  “She was a thief. I told you, we have our share of them here.”

  “What did she steal?”

  “One of Flaherty’s petticoats. Flaherty found out about it and told Miss Montgomery.”

  “Did this girl admit it?”

  “She could hardly deny it, could she, when the petticoat was found under her mattress?”

  “So then?”

  “She was angry with Flaherty, of course. She went after her—right here in the office. A terrible scene she made. She went for Flaherty’s throat, crying that she would kill her. I hauled her off,” she added.

  “And then she left?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you saw nothing of her afterward?”

  “I didn’t, no. But the next day, when Flaherty went out, Kent was waiting for her over on Warren Avenue. She went after her again—set right on her. Lucky for Flaherty there was a policeman nearby.”

  “And the girl was arrested?”

  “Yes.”

  Easy enough to check, he thought.

  “Do you know where she is living now? Assuming that she is not in the lockup.”

  “On Chambers Street, in the West End.”

  “Did Mary have any other enemies that you know of?” Aside from yourself, he thought.

  Matron Pratt shrugged. “I don’t know about enemies, but she didn’t have many friends. She thought too well of herself, if you can imagine it. And she was far too free, coming and going. I don’t know why Miss Montgomery allowed it.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “She didn’t keep to a schedule like the others. She’d work here in the office at night, and then she’d go out during the day. She had to run her errands, she’d say. Errands! I ask you. And often enough she’d go out at night, too, without signing out. Where was she going at all hours? Aside from everything else, it isn’t safe for a girl to go wandering about in this district. I guess she learned that lesson in the end,” she added with grim satisfaction.

  “Did you ever speak to her about it? About her comings and goings?”

  “Oh, yes. I spoke to her all right. But she never thought she had to listen to what I said. ‘Never you mind about me, Mrs. Pratt,’ she said. And gave me such a look! I’d have taken a switch to her if I could. The little baggage! Well, she went out one last time, didn’t she? And she never came back.” Her face had taken on a gloating expression that Ames found repulsive.

  “Did you see her go?” he asked.

  “No. Sunday night is the night for my meetings over on Columbus Avenue. I go out at a quarter to seven every week.”

  “And you return when?”

  “Not before ten.”

  “I see. Was Sunday visiting day, perhaps? Were there any visitors to the house that day—anyone strange, I mean, whom Mary might have met? Fathers of the other girls—brothers or uncles perhaps?”

  “No men!” she snapped.

  “No men visitors? None at all?”

  “Men are the cause of all their troubles, Mr. Ames.” Matron Pratt’s face had darkened into an expression of pure hate.

  “But surely—”

  “Men are vile creatures through and through. I should know—I was married to one of ’em once.” A sneer had enhanced her expression, so that she looked more forbidding than ever.

  “Surely there are some men in the world of whom you approve,” Ames said. “The Reverend Montgomery, for instance.”

  “Not him either.”

  “But he comes here, does he not?”

  “Yes,” she muttered darkly.

  Against your wishes, MacKenzie thought.

  “All men are worthless if you ask me,” she added. “And so are the girls who go with them.”

  MacKenzie felt slightly ill in the face of this woman’s implacable animosity toward all his sex.

  There came a tap at the door: one of the girls, come to announce that Miss Montgomery would see the gentlemen now.

  In her private r
oom at the rear of the house, Agatha Montgomery sat in her rocking chair before the low fire. At her murmured word, the two men sat opposite her on the same worn horsehair sofa where MacKenzie had sat with Caroline two days before.

  “It is good of you to see us,” Ames began.

  Miss Montgomery inclined her head. She looked somewhat more composed than before, but still there were lines of tension around her mouth, and a haunted look in her pale eyes.

  “You should not have troubled yourself, Mr. Ames.”

  “As I said, Caroline wanted us to. And—” He reached to his inside jacket pocket and withdrew the envelope containing his sister’s note. “She invites you to dinner this evening—you and your brother. She is entertaining a ‘lion’ from London, and she thought he might amuse you.”

  She did not at first seem to understand what he said. “How … kind.”

  “You will come?”

  “I—I don’t know.”

  “Just a dozen or so people, a congenial company. She thought it might—ah—divert you a little.”

  “Caroline has always been a good friend to me, and now she still—” She broke off, thinking. “All right, Mr. Ames. Yes. We will come, and please thank her for her thoughtfulness. She has always, over the years—I remember when my father—well. That was a long time ago, was it not?”

  She fell silent, staring at her hands clasped in her lap.

  Then Ames said: “Miss Montgomery, can you tell us anything about the second girl who was killed?”

  “You mean Brown.” She did not look at him.

  “Yes.”

  She shook her head. “No. Nothing. She was a good girl, quiet, obedient. I thought that when she left us, she would have no difficulty in finding a position—a decent position—to support herself.”

  “Was she from Boston?”

  “No. Fall River.”

  “No family locally?”

  “Nor in Fall River either, as far as I know.”

  “I see. And no enemies?”

  “No. She was far too inoffensive to have enemies, Mr. Ames.”

  “Did she have any particular friendships here?”

  “Only Mary.” She used the girl’s Christian name, he noted. Was that significant?

  “So Bridget would have been upset about Mary’s death?”

  “Oh, yes. She was very upset. She—” Miss Montgomery pressed her lips together, as if she were trying to keep back what she had almost said.

  “Yes? She what?” Ames prompted softly.

  “She … went out. In the late afternoon, after her sewing class. She came to me to ask permission, and of course I refused it. How could I have agreed to let her go out after what had happened to Mary only the night before?”

  “But still, she went.”

  “Yes. I remonstrated with her—”

  “You mean you argued.”

  Ames had a mental image of poor Bridget, inoffensive, humble, arguing with Agatha Montgomery. The girl must have had a very good reason indeed to defy her, never mind wanting to leave the safety of the Bower.

  “Yes. But short of physically restraining her, I could not stop her. After she left, I thought that perhaps she wanted to go to church—to find a priest perhaps.”

  “So what did you do then?”

  “I followed her.”

  “And did you ever find her?”

  “No. I went all the way to the cathedral, but I never saw her.”

  “Did you go in?”

  “Yes. She wasn’t there.”

  “So you came back?”

  “Yes. It was raining hard.” She shivered as if she were still cold and wet, as she must have been last night, hunting for Bridget Brown through the dark streets of the South End.

  “And when she didn’t return?”

  Miss Montgomery’s gaunt face crumpled for a moment, then she regained control. She met Ames’s eyes steadily as she said, “I will tell you frankly, Mr. Ames, it is not unheard of for one of our girls to go missing. I was frantic, but of course I could not let it be seen. The girls were upset enough, what with Mary’s death.”

  “You did not think to notify the police?”

  Miss Montgomery looked a trifle abashed. “I cannot go to the police every time one of our girls fails to turn up for supper. I would have gone, yes—if, say, in a day or two she had not come back.”

  She pressed her handkerchief to her eyes as if to forestall her tears.

  Suddenly restless, Ames stood up and began to pace the little room. He thought of Crippen’s revelation that Mary had been pregnant. Did Miss Montgomery know that? It was too delicate a question to put to her at this point, he thought; if he went too far beyond the bounds of good manners, she would refuse to talk to him altogether.

  But the coded note—yes, he could ask her about that.

  She stared at the copy he’d made. “I have no idea what this is.”

  “Or who could have sent it?”

  “No.”

  “Did Mary receive the Bower’s mail?”

  “Yes. She dealt with it every day.”

  “So we cannot know if this was sent to her through the mail or if someone here”—she looked up at him sharply—“gave it to her.”

  “Who would do that?” she said. “Anyone here who wanted to send a message to her could simply speak to her.”

  “Then, for the moment, at any rate, we must assume that this was sent to her from outside. So even if Bridget had no friends or family in the city, Mary probably did.”

  Do you know, he thought, watching her. Do you know that Mary had someone who was more than a casual friend, someone who had put her in the family way, and then, very possibly, killed her to silence her?

  Miss Montgomery handed back his pocket notebook. “Did the police have any idea—”

  “No. None. Inspector Crippen asked me to look at it because he thought I might be able to translate it.”

  “And can you?”

  “No.”

  She blinked several times, as if absorbing what he said, and then she stood up.

  “I must thank you again, Mr. Ames, for being so kind.”

  She was dismissing them. No, he thought, not yet.

  “I wonder if we could impose on you a little further, Miss Montgomery.”

  She’d put out her hand to bid him good-bye, but now she took it back. “Yes?” she said warily.

  “I would very much like to see Mary and Bridget’s room.”

  She hesitated. “I am afraid that isn’t possible.”

  “Because—?”

  “Because—it isn’t clean.”

  “But that is nothing. Clean or not, it doesn’t matter. I simply want to see it—just for a moment.”

  Still she hesitated. As she looked down at the tips of her worn boots protruding from beneath her dark skirts, she seemed to be waging some internal struggle. MacKenzie wondered if she, like Matron Pratt, harbored a dislike—a hatred, even—toward men.

  At last she gave in and looked up at Ames. “All right. If you insist.”

  She led them out and up the stairs. As they went, MacKenzie glanced behind, down to the hall. He saw the office door cracked open, and he knew that their progress was being observed by the dragon matron.

  It was mid-morning; some of the Bower’s residents were in the second-floor hall, changing classes. MacKenzie noted that all of them, dark or fair, tall or short, looked more or less the same, and not only because of their plain dark dresses and white aprons. They all had a look of defeat about them, he thought, and in girls so young—most of them did not look more than in their early twenties—such a look was painful to see.

  Now, catching sight of the two strange men, a few of them stifled little cries of alarm, and all of them looked frightened. MacKenzie had a sudden urge to speak to them, to reassure them that he and Ames meant no harm, but of course he could not.

  Miss Montgomery led them on, up to the third floor. She stopped before a door numbered 37. Without knocking—for who would
answer now?—she turned the knob and pushed open the door.

  The room was dim, the blind at the single window pulled down. Only a little light from the gas fixtures in the hall penetrated to the interior. Then Miss Montgomery turned up the gas by the door and suddenly the room was filled with a harsh, bleak illumination.

  They saw a bare linoleum floor; two cots, both neatly made; two night tables; two small bureaus topped with basins and ewers; one small bookcase. A door ajar halfway along one wall showed the presence of a closet. Over one cot hung a lithograph of Jesus; over the other, a small crucifix. Not clean? thought Ames. Despite Miss Montgomery’s objections, the room looked as if it and everything in it had been freshly scrubbed and polished.

  He stood still for a moment, looking around. “Do you know what the police took with them, if anything?”

  “No.”

  He went to the closet door and opened it: a small, shallow space. A few items of clothing hung from hooks; on a shelf were two flimsy cardboard hat boxes.

  He turned back to the room as if he expected something—some telling thing—to announce itself. But the room was as anonymous—as unrevealing—as a vacant room in a cheap hotel.

  He went to the bookcase, which held perhaps a dozen volumes. He took each one and flipped through its pages to see if something might fall out—a note, a clipping, anything to tell him something about the two girls who had shared this barren chamber.

  “Did the police examine these?” he asked Miss Montgomery.

  “Not that I saw.”

  A few dime novelettes; a book on etiquette; a Life of Jesus; a cheap edition of Little Women; the memoirs of Mary Livermore, who had been a nurse during the Civil War. This last bore an inscription: “For another Mary, from one who admires her very much, in the hope that it will inspire her to be a good girl.”

  He held it out to Miss Montgomery. “Do you know who gave her this?”

  She looked at it. “No.”

  “Were you aware that she possessed it?”

  “No.”

  “So you do not know whether she brought it with her when she came, or—”

  “She didn’t do that. She came—” Her voice roughened, and she cleared her throat. “She came with no more than the clothes on her back. And those we disposed of immediately, since they were not fit to wear.”

  He glanced at the inscription once more and then returned the book to the shelf. He opened the bureau drawers, riffled through the contents of each one. Nothing. Remembering the tale of the stolen petticoat, he turned first to one cot and then to the other and slid his hand underneath the thin mattresses. Nothing there either.