MURDER AT BERTRAM'S BOWER

by Cynthia Peale

  Ames told him.

  “I see. Admirable. She wants to protect her friend and her good work.”

  “Yes.”

  “And she thinks her brother is the man to do it.”

  “Yes.”

  “She may well be right.” James smiled. “So what did you want to ask me?”

  “There is a rumor, scurrilously being spread in the newspapers today, that Jack the Ripper has come to Boston.”

  “I know. I heard the newsboys as I came in.”

  “As you can imagine, this irresponsible notion—that we have such a madman in our midst—has put considerable pressure on the police.”

  “Of course.”

  “And so I was wondering—I hardly know how to put it. Everyone describes the Ripper as a homicidal lunatic, and that is how they refer to this man here in Boston as well. What the public does not know, because the police have not released the information, is that the first girl who was killed was pregnant. So her condition might have been a motive for her murder.”

  “But the second girl was not?”

  “No. And because her death seems motiveless—”

  “As far as you know.”

  “As far as I know, yes. But if—I repeat, if—Mary Flaherty’s pregnancy was not a motive, then the killings may in fact have been random acts committed by some madman. But he is not obviously mad, not raving and conversing with voices in his head, or he would instantly call attention to himself.”

  “No,” James replied, “I would think he is not that.”

  “So what kind of madman are we looking for? Can you venture a guess—make some kind of hypothetical description of him?”

  James sat back in his chair, steepling his fingers.

  “It is an interesting question,” he began. “And you—and your sister—have more than, shall we say, an academic interest in the answer.”

  “Yes.”

  “You would like a psychological profile of the man who killed those two girls—leaving motive out of it?”

  “Psychological profile,” Ames repeated. It was not a term he had heard before, but it fit. “Yes. That is it precisely. What is such a man like, Professor? In his mind—in his emotions—in his soul, if you will? A man who attacks women in the streets at night for no obvious reason other than that they have crossed his path?”

  James thought for a moment. Then: “I have no idea.”

  At once he saw Ames’s face drop with disappointment, and he added quickly: “Which is not to say that I won’t try to answer you all the same. What is this man like? Why, I would say that he is like the character in Robert Louis Stevenson’s tale The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Have you read it?”

  “No.”

  “Fascinating. The great writers—the Greek tragedians, Shakespeare, Dickens—are very wise about the human psyche. I am not sure that I would classify Stevenson as the equal of Sophocles—I would not, in fact—but nevertheless, in that story, he created an unforgettable character, a man who could well be your murderer.”

  “Or he could be Jack the Ripper,” MacKenzie offered.

  “Or Jack the Ripper, yes.”

  “So you are saying—what?” Ames asked.

  “I am saying that he is probably a man who is someone like us. An ordinary man, showing no hint of the sickness within himself—a mental sickness rather than physical, and therefore sometimes difficult to see. A softening of the brain, perhaps, that like a recurring fever periodically erupts and drives him to violence.”

  This is hardly helpful, Ames thought.

  “In the story,” the professor went on, “Dr. Jekyll becomes more and more deranged—and it shows physically. But that need not be so. This man here in Boston may well seem perfectly normal, whatever that is, with no change in his appearance. The change, you understand, being Stevenson’s way of dealing with the mind-body relationship, his way of showing, externally, Dr. Jekyll’s mental and spiritual deterioration. Caused by a potion—again, symbolic, used for dramatic effect. I would say that he—your murderer here—is probably fairly low-key. Inoffensive, mild-mannered. But underneath—yes, underneath he is a sadistic killer. It is possible that he gets sexual satisfaction from what he does. I gathered from the newspaper accounts that the girls were pretty badly cut up. Around the female organs? Yes? Well, that fits with what I am telling you.”

  “So he could be anyone,” MacKenzie said uneasily.

  “Yes.”

  Ames gave a short laugh. “Crippen will not be happy to hear that.”

  The professor shrugged. “That is his problem, not mine. I am simply trying to answer your question.”

  “Of course. And do you think—since we are assuming that both girls were killed by the same man—might we assume also that he will find a third victim?”

  “Or even a fourth or a fifth,” James replied.

  “Like the Ripper, in fact.”

  “Yes. Until somehow he is stopped.”

  Which is what Chadwick said last night, Ames thought. “The Ripper was never stopped—or not by the police, at any rate. The killings stopped, but the police never caught him.”

  “Is there any record of such a case?” MacKenzie asked. “Other than the Ripper, I mean. A man who kills repeatedly for no apparent motive? Again and again—”

  “Serially,” James said. “One, and another, and another, and another. That is what I would call him, in fact: a serial killer.” The phrase had an ominous ring to it.

  “The Ripper was that, of course,” James added. “And I suppose Bluebeard would qualify, if he existed. Otherwise I know of no example, nor of any way to predict such behavior, much less prevent it. We have much to learn”—and here he smiled at them—“about ourselves and our darker impulses, which we hide under the rather thin veneer of civilization.”

  Much indeed, thought MacKenzie. And meanwhile—

  Professor James stood. “I must go. My students await me. But listen, Ames. If this man is caught—”

  When, Ames thought. It must be when.

  “—I would be glad of an hour’s conversation with him.” James tapped his high, domed brow. “To discover, perhaps, a little of how his mind works. Fascinating, is it not? The workings of the mind—a secret world, each man’s mind hidden from every other. Good day to you, gentlemen. I hope I have been of some little help.”

  That noontime, while Ames and MacKenzie were lunching at the St. Botolph, Caroline ate a hurried, solitary meal at home. Then, well protected against the elements in galoshes and waterproof and carrying an umbrella, she set off for Bertram’s Bower, where, half an hour later, she was admitted by a girl she didn’t know.

  “Is Matron in?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am.” The girl was a dark, bold-looking little thing with slightly protruding eyes. Almost at once she disappeared down the back hall.

  Caroline knocked on the office door.

  “Come!” was the brusque reply.

  Matron Pratt sat at what had been Mary Flaherty’s desk. She was wielding a pen, her brow knotted in fierce concentration.

  “Good afternoon, Matron.” Caroline had never felt quite at ease in Mrs. Pratt’s company, and she felt even less so now.

  “ ’Afternoon, Miss Ames.”

  “How are you?”

  “I’m well enough.”

  “And the girls—how are they managing?”

  A faint sneer crossed Mrs. Pratt’s face. “Not so saucy nowadays.”

  “I was wondering—” Caroline had approached the desk, and now she stood before it, as much a supplicant as any poor Bower girl.

  “Yes?” barked Mrs. Pratt.

  “I—I would like to talk to some of the girls. I’ll start my class on their work, and then I’ll have a little while free. Would that be permissible?”

  Mrs. Pratt blinked. “Talk to the girls? What about?”

  “Why, about Mary and Bridget.”

  Mrs. Pratt sniffed. “I don’t see what good that would do. They don’t know anything
they haven’t already told the police.”

  “Yes, but—” Caroline’s gaze strayed to the bookshelves as she struggled to find a way to make her case. A row of account books, a dictionary, a volume on deportment, and—

  “What is that, Matron?”

  “What is what?”

  “May I?” Without waiting for permission, Caroline stepped to the bookshelf and slid out something that was little more than a pamphlet: an instruction manual for the Remington typewriting machine.

  “This is what the Reverend Montgomery gave to Mary,” she said, “so she could study it before he bought the machine itself.”

  Mrs. Pratt regarded her with hostile eyes. “Yes.”

  “Has it always been kept here?”

  “Mostly. Sometimes she took it up to her room to study it. Much good it did her.”

  “I see.” Caroline slid the little pamphlet back into place. The coded note, she thought: And this might be its key. Just as—thanks to Diana Strangeways—she’d thought. Well, she’d have to depend on Addington to decipher it, as she was sure he would.

  “As I was saying, Matron—I’d like to talk to some of the girls who may have known Mary and Bridget. Can you give me any names?”

  Mrs. Pratt thought about it. Then, grudgingly: “All right. They might not be so eager to speak to you, what with the police asking questions all over the place. But, yes, go ahead. Say I gave permission.”

  “Mrs. Pratt—” Had the woman been less hostile, Caroline would have seized her hand; as it was, she clenched her own hands into fists in an effort to strengthen her determination.

  “You understand that we—my brother and I—are trying to help you.”

  To her surprise, Matron Pratt’s grim visage softened. “I know that, Miss Ames. You’re a good friend to Miss Montgomery. Not like some,” she added bitterly. “And Lord knows she needs her friends now. She’s built this place up from nothing over the years, she’s given her life to these girls, and to see it all disappear, just because of some madman— Well. I made up my mind the day I came here, I would stand by her come what may. I know the girls think I’m too hard on them. Of course I’m hard. That’s what I’m paid to be. I don’t do it for them in any case.”

  To Caroline’s astonishment, the matron’s eyes glistened with tears, and she paused for a moment to regain her composure. Caroline had never thought Mrs. Pratt had the smallest chink in her armor, not the tiniest soft spot in her adamantine heart. But she did: Agatha Montgomery.

  “No, I don’t do it for them,” Mrs. Pratt repeated. “I do it for her. She gives herself night and day, works herself to the bone for them—and do they appreciate it? No. They come in here straight from the streets, and the first thing you know, they’re complaining about me. About the discipline, about the fact that I make them keep clean and abide by the daily schedule and do their work—oh, yes, I know they don’t like me. But do I care? Not a bit. I work for Miss Montgomery, not for them.”

  Will wonders never cease? thought Caroline. I can never again think of you with dislike, Matron Pratt, not after this little confession.

  “And you are indispensable to her, Mrs. Pratt. I’m sure you know that.”

  “Yes.” Matron was her former grim self once more, all show of emotion gone. “I am. And she knows it too. Now. You wanted the names of girls who knew Flaherty and Brown. You should speak to Quinlan—and O’Connell, I suppose.” She glanced at the large Seth Thomas clock on the wall. “They should be in the reading room. You’re taking your class today as usual?”

  “Yes—yes, of course. I’ll just start the girls on their work, and then I’ll find—ah—Quinlan and O’Connell.” She hated Matron’s use of last names only, but she supposed there was a reason for it.

  Upstairs, she settled the eight girls in her class into their work. Nine, she thought; there should be nine. Bridget had been in this class. Her empty chair was by the window. As Caroline’s throat tightened, she coughed, but the tightness didn’t go away. The girls were working on the satin stitch. Most of them were embroidering handkerchiefs—little squares of cloth that Caroline had bought, cut to size, and brought to class. They had hemmed them, and now they were embroidering their initials.

  “Go on with it,” she said to them, “and I will be back shortly.”

  They gazed at her with sad, wary eyes. Most of them had succeeded in learning the satin stitch, but in the larger world, when they left the Bower, success at anything would be chancy, she knew. She supposed they knew it as well. Poorly paid clerking in a store, even worse paid factory work—such would be success for them.

  She left the classroom, closing the door behind her. She was on the second floor. The Bower was quiet, everyone at her assigned place. She’d need to look in on Agatha before she left, if only to make sure that her indisposition of last night had cleared up. But just now she wanted to find the girls who had known Mary and Bridget.

  The reading room was at the back of the second floor. Its shelves were filled with mostly self-improving tomes: A Young Woman’s Guide; A Treatise for Young Ladies; Mrs. Smallwood’s Manners and Morals. Diana Strangeways would have no place here, thought Caroline, which was too bad. Her stories were sensation stories, yes, but at least they gave one some enjoyment; these stuffy preachings could put a girl off reading for life.

  A few young women were sitting at tables, books spread open before them. At least one, resting her head in her hands, seemed to be asleep. The girls Caroline sought were sitting side by side, whispering—something that was forbidden by the list of rules posted on the wall: no talking, no whispering, no exchanging of notes, no eating, no sleeping.…

  They seemed startled to see her, but then they recognized her as one of the good women of Boston who regularly came to teach them. And when she asked them to come with her, they promptly obeyed—glad, perhaps, to leave the reading room and its stultifying offerings.

  Where to have a private word with them? They suggested the dining room at the rear of the first floor. It would be empty now, and they probably would not be disturbed.

  Quinlan—that was Liza—was the more forthcoming of the two. She was brown-haired, plain, with a scar across her upper lip where once, perhaps, it had been split. She’d taken a penmanship class with Caroline several weeks before, and Caroline had liked her; she’d seemed bright, with a fair amount of gumption. Now, in fact, she showed a remarkable amount of spirit as she answered Caroline’s questions.

  Yes, she remembered the fight between Mary and Verna Kent. Verna had threatened Mary—oh, yes. She’d screamed and yelled something terrible. Matron herself had had to forcibly put her out.

  And then on the street—yes, Verna had found Mary the next day and had threatened her again.

  “But in the end, she didn’t actually do Mary any harm?” Caroline asked.

  “No, miss.” Liza’s eyes grew round as she considered the implications of the question. “Do you think it was Verna who done it, miss? Mary an’ Bridget both?”

  “No. In fact, I am fairly certain it was not. We found Verna. She is very ill. I don’t believe she could have been well enough to get up in the night and walk out into the pouring rain.”

  Liza nodded, somewhat reassured.

  Why? Caroline wondered. Because of the notion that it was, after all, some stranger who had done these terrible crimes rather than a girl who had lived among them? Yes: A stranger they could understand, menacing though he might still be. But to believe that a girl like themselves had killed someone she’d known at the Bower—that was too unnerving.

  “Did you know Mary well, Liza?”

  Liza shrugged. “Some.”

  “Katy? Did you?”

  Katy was pale: eyes, hair, skin—all of it. She licked her lips nervously before she replied. “A little, yes, miss.”

  “And do you know if she had any enemies? Anyone who might have wanted to do her harm?”

  Katy let out a nervous laugh. “Nobody liked her much, miss.”

  “Wh
y not?”

  “She was—” Like the others, Katy had a vocabulary too limited to express herself well. “Uppity, like.”

  “You mean, she gave herself airs? Thought she was better than everyone else?”

  Katy nodded, relieved to have been understood. “That’s it. Like she was too good for us. An’ she used to say how she wouldn’t be here for long.”

  “Because she was going to find another position someplace else? Or—”

  Katy’s face twisted with the effort of remembering precisely. “I think—well, she didn’t come right out an’ say it, but I think she had it in mind to get a husband.”

  “Really? And did she say who he might be?”

  Katy shook her head. “No. But I heard her say”—she affected a high, mincing voice—“ ‘I’ll have a ring on my finger before long. An’ good riddance to all of you here.’ ”

  She lifted her chin. “I ask you, miss, who would marry one of us?”

  Her simple question—the bleakness of it, the premise upon which it was based—wrung Caroline’s heart. Who indeed?

  “But you never knew who the man was? She never mentioned a name?”

  “No, miss.”

  “We didn’t see much of her,” Liza offered.

  “Because she worked in the office?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that was another reason she—ah—gave herself airs? Because she had that position?”

  “Yes.”

  Liza seemed to want to say more, but she was having trouble with it.

  “Go on, Liza,” Caroline prompted.

  They sat before her, eyes downcast. What is it that they are not telling me? Caroline wondered. And how can I persuade them to divulge it? She felt like a bully, but she pushed on nevertheless. “Because she worked in the office for Miss Montgomery,” she said, “and because—”

  “Because of him,” Liza said very low.

  “Who?”

  The two girls exchanged a glance. Liza sniffled. “I don’t like to say, miss.”

  “Oh, but you must tell me, Liza. If Mary knew anyone—any man, I mean—who might have wanted to do her harm—”