Secret of the White Rose

by Stefanie Pintoff

  I leaned forward to speak to the driver. “Would you stop here, please?”

  Then Isabella turned to me, her face sympathetic. “May I see it?”

  “Of course,” I said, giving her a reassuring smile. “Just not tonight.”

  I exited the wagon and handed the driver sufficient fare to take Isabella home. I tipped my hat to her and, as the driver started his horses, crossed to the other side of First Avenue and my former building. I looked up to the fifth-floor window overlooking the street. That had been our flat—a fifth-floor walk-up of the most miserable kind. Three rooms—a back room, front room, and kitchen—had housed the four of us. Three of us, really—for my father was rarely there. My mother had done her best to decorate it. She’d placed mantel scarves on all our shelves and displayed her dishes. She’d painted our back room walls green and put up a red paisley wallpaper in the front room. But all the colors and scarves hadn’t obscured what was a meager existence. And it was likely just as squalid an existence inside as it had ever been. I’d managed to escape all that—and I’d no desire to go back, even for the most fleeting of moments.

  But tonight, I must.

  Hannah’s building was the one next to mine—only slightly less decrepit and forlorn. With a deep breath, I steeled myself, entered, and ascended a narrow wooden staircase that reeked of urine.

  On the third floor, I turned toward the Strupp apartment—number 3C. Perhaps they had moved, I thought for a fleeting second. But no—I smelled the odor of fresh-cooked brisket, which had been Mrs. Strupp’s speciality.

  It had to be done. Waiting would make this no easier.

  I knocked.

  It seemed several minutes—but was in fact only seconds—before the door opened. A petite woman no taller than five feet two inches stood before me. Her jet-black hair, now heavily streaked with gray, was pulled back tightly into a bun, and her olive skin was heavily wrinkled from worry and age.

  She opened her mouth—and suddenly her eyes registered a spark of recognition.

  “Simon,” she said with a sigh of relief. “You’ve come.”

  And before I could say a word in answer, she had enveloped me in a tight hug.

  CHAPTER 8

  120 First Avenue, Apartment 3C. 8:30 P.M.

  The living room was as I remembered it: crammed from wall to wall with broken-down furniture and smelling of beef and potatoes. I had spent so many wonderful evenings here with Hannah and the Strupps, my surrogate family at the time, that I could describe the apartment with my eyes closed. Nothing was noticeably different since my last and final visit here two years ago. Yet the surroundings were drabber, the furniture more threadbare than I recalled. I wondered what had changed more: this third-floor tenement flat that was the center of my life just a few short years earlier—or myself, now that I had left this existence behind.

  The Strupps had never boasted much in the way of material possessions. Hannah’s father, who owned a drugstore on the corner of East Ninth Street and First Avenue, was too kindly a man to run a successful business. He would extend his neighbors’ monthly accounts as a matter of course, with the inevitable result that some took advantage of his leniency and never paid at all. “You need medicine more than I need money,” he’d tell his elderly customers—even as Mrs. Strupp complained under her breath that “you’d think we were running a charity, not a pharmacy.”

  The realization that Mrs. Strupp was talking to me shook me back into the present.

  “Sit, sit,” she urged.

  I complied with an awkward half-smile, taking a seat on a sagging orange sofa that was riddled with stains.

  “I’ve made a fresh batch of knoephla soup. Please, have some.”

  She beamed in anticipation. Knoephla soup had always been her specialty, and she prided herself on the light, fluffy dumplings that filled it.

  “I just finished dinner,” I replied, shaking my head. But the moment I saw the disappointment that filled her eyes, I added, “But I’ll taste a small bowl. I haven’t forgotten how delicious your dumplings are.”

  She was all smiles again as she stepped into the small kitchen just to the room’s left. I heard the sound of a metal ladle clanging against a pot as I surveyed more of the room: the coat rack with Mrs. Strupp’s thick green shawl flung across it; the peeling floral wallpaper, once red but now faded to the palest pink; the simple gaslights on either side of the sofa that provided some light to the room. That was when I saw the table, nestled behind a rattan chair. In dim gaslight, I had missed it at first. There, to the left of the window, placed so as to be protected from the rain—and it was covered with photographs. Unable to help myself, I drew nearer and saw Hannah: first as a budding beauty at sixteen with a winsome smile; then in our engagement photograph, me beside her, stiff and self-conscious yet beaming with happiness. I looked absurdly young: another man, living a life that was no longer my own.

  I had returned to my seat by the time she appeared with two bowls of soup, handing one to me and placing another on the table.

  “For Hans,” she explained, indicating her husband. “He will be home any moment.”

  I glanced at my watch. It was half past nine—which meant he was working late hours at the pharmacy, a fact she soon confirmed.

  “Times are tough,” she said. “So many neighbors have left since…”

  She didn’t finish. She didn’t have to. I knew better than anyone how many, like me, had chosen to move away in the months that followed. I’d certainly found my own grief easier to bear when it wasn’t mirrored in the faces of everyone around me.

  “Hans works hard yet brings home less than ever,” she said, her eyes clouding with worry.

  Then just as suddenly, she brightened and asked, “But tell me about you, Simon. Are you still working up north?”

  “Up north” meant Dobson, the small village in Westchester County just fifteen miles north of Manhattan where I had spent two years forgetting my life in the city—or certainly trying my best to do so. I knew that for the Strupps, anything north of Fourteenth Street was uncharted territory—so from their perspective, my move to Dobson had taken me beyond the pale. I had often wondered why the same people who possessed enough spirit of adventure to come to America in the first place chose to limit their existence to a few square blocks once here. The Strupps had done just that—and they certainly were not alone.

  “I just returned,” I said, explaining to her between spoonfuls of soup that I was a detective working for Declan Mulvaney, now a precinct captain.

  “Ah my.” She clapped her hands together in delight, for she had known Mulvaney well when I first joined the force and he was my partner on patrol in the Lower East Side. Her expression turned wistful as she added, “You boys have come far. As I always knew you would.”

  What remained unspoken was her hope—now forever lost—that I would take Hannah with me.

  A key turned in the lock and a tall man with gray whiskers, a thick handlebar mustache, and gentle eyes came into the room.

  “Hans,” she whispered, “look who’s here.”

  He came farther into the room, turned to me—and his look of surprise was almost immediately replaced by a broad grin as he came over to pump my right hand vigorously. I managed not to wince, though the shot of pain that raced up and down my arm was terrific. He had forgotten my injury—and that was a good thing.

  As he ate his soup hungrily, the three of us talked of the past two years, focusing on mutual acquaintances and changes in the neighborhood. Neither of the Strupps showed any sign of resentment or anger toward me—a fact that did little to assuage my own sense of guilt. What we avoided was any mention of Hannah, for my own presence here after two years’ absence was more than reminder enough. In this room where time seemed to stand still, her ghost hovered around me, threatening to take hold of my long-fought-for sanity.

  “What brings you here tonight, Simon?” Hans Strupp finally asked. He gripped the sides of his chair, bracing himself firmly, and I
realized they both probably assumed I was here to tell them I was engaged to another woman—or similar news.

  Wanting to spare them that at least, my words tumbled out of my mouth in a rush. “I came because of your son. Jonathan is in trouble.”

  * * *

  Mrs. Strupp’s face collapsed, but it was Mr. Strupp who answered.

  “Has he been arrested—or hurt?” He phrased it as though those were the only alternatives—and it was clear that he was resigned to either one, for he had apparently been expecting bad news about Jonathan for some time.

  “As far as I know, he’s fine right now,” I said, quickly reassuring them. Then I paused, knowing that once they had been regular readers of both German and American papers. “I’m not sure how closely you’ve been following the news, but a judge was killed on Monday night.”

  I saw the flash of recognition in Hans Strupp’s eyes. “The judge in the child-killer case,” he muttered.

  I confirmed it.

  His face went white. “They think the anarchists are involved, don’t they? Is Johnny…?” He couldn’t bring himself to say the words.

  “I need to talk with him,” I said. “I understand that he’s involved with the anarchists—that he’s in a position of authority within the New York organization.”

  Hans Strupp balled his right hand into a fist, gripping it with his left. “It’s true.”

  “From the beginning, we’ve tried to stop him. We’ve told him he’ll come to no good with that group,” Mrs. Strupp said, her expression pained.

  I pushed my half-finished bowl of soup away from me and took my notebook and pencil out of my satchel. “Can we start at the beginning? I need to know how Jonathan came to be part of the anarchist movement.”

  * * *

  Half an hour later, we were still talking—mugs of coffee in hand. The Strupps still favored Lion’s Coffee, a brand that unabashedly targeted German-Americans with the slogan “All Germans Like It.” It was once a favorite of mine, and I was surprised by how bland it tasted now—lacking the rich, deep flavor of the Italian brands I’d come to prefer.

  They told me all about how a Czech man named Paul Hlad had befriended Jonathan—first pretending to share Johnny’s scientific interests, then encouraging him to attend anarchist meetings at various German beer halls in the city, and finally convincing him that, when put to use, the anarchist ideals would allow him to avenge his sister’s death. Still, I remained puzzled.

  “Johnny was a scientist,” I said. “All he talked about was Svante Arrhenius and Marie Curie, as well as college and the scholarship he hoped to win.”

  I searched their faces for some sign, some explanation—but none was forthcoming.

  “He changed,” Mr. Strupp said, twisting the button on his left shirtsleeve. “One day, he talked of nothing but Pierre and Marie Curie and what they did for chemistry … then the next, he was raving about the capitalists and how they killed his sister.” His voice, bitter, choked when he added, “You know the charge as well as we do: how greed led the Slocum’s owners and captain to cut corners on safety and bribe the inspectors.” His button snapped, flying across the room. “Would it have cost them so much to buy new life vests when the old turned to dust? Hundreds might have lived, if only—” He broke off, unable to continue.

  Countless others, and perhaps Hannah among them, could have been saved. But the steamship’s owners were focused solely on profit, not safety, and so they had set out that day with rotten life vests that drowned those they should have saved—not to mention lifeboats that had been painted and wired onto the decks so that no one could detach them. The owners of the Slocum as well as the inspectors who had taken a bribe were equally at fault, but only Captain Van Schaick had been made to answer for this negligence with a ten-year prison term. The owners and managers of the company had escaped charges, untouched by the disaster that had killed so many.

  Mrs. Strupp silently crossed the room and searched for the missing button as her husband continued to talk.

  “Well over a year ago,” he said, “when it seemed no one responsible would see jail time, Johnny became obsessed with how none of the ship’s owners had to face up to their misconduct. He started spouting nonsense about the evils of capitalism, and how that was what killed Hannah. No individual person, see—but ‘the system.’ He started going to workers’ meetings regularly. He made new friends … and abandoned his old ones entirely.”

  I was silent for some moments. I had been angry for a long time, too—but my own rage centered on those individuals who had made bad decisions. Their judgment—or lack thereof—had cost over a thousand people their lives. That was human error, not the capitalist system. And yet Johnny, feeling similar emotions, had come to a different conclusion.

  “The anarchists focused Johnny’s anger and gave him a target,” Mrs. Strupp explained. “Now it’s all he does. We barely see him anymore.”

  “So he doesn’t live here?” I asked.

  “Hasn’t for over a year,” his father responded.

  “How often do you see him?”

  “He came for Hans’s birthday in August,” Mrs. Strupp said, her voice dull. “We’ve not seen him since. Only the occasional letter, sometimes with money.”

  “He has regular work?”

  “No.” Hans Strupp shook his head. “I think he lives off what the membership contributes. He’s high enough up that they pay him. Or maybe he just takes what he needs.”

  “Do you know any of his associates other than Paul Hlad?”

  “A few. We can give you their names,” Mr. Strupp offered.

  “If you would,” I said. “Do you have any idea where I might find him?”

  The Strupps exchanged a look but were silent.

  “The commissioner has asked me to talk with him.” I continued to press them, slightly annoyed that they were holding something important back. “But if I don’t, someone else will come looking for him.” I let the implication linger.

  Finally, Hans Strupp cleared his throat. “We have an arrangement, but for emergencies only.”

  “Your son is a suspect in a high-profile murder case. If that doesn’t constitute an emergency…” I trailed off, mincing no words.

  Mr. Strupp, with a guilty look, apologized. “We will contact him for you. Ask him to meet you at a specific time and place.”

  He was about to continue when a loud wail came from the back room. With a start, Mrs. Strupp got up and scuttled across the room.

  I raised my eyebrows, giving Hans Strupp a searching look.

  He stared down at the floor.

  “You have a baby here?” I asked, knowing it was a stupid question.

  He remained silent, at a loss for words, while my mind raced through the possibilities. I had just settled on the most likely possibility—that Mrs. Strupp had taken work as a baby nurse to earn extra money—when my answer arrived in the form of a small bundle, swathed in pink and cream, nestled in Mrs. Strupp’s arms. The baby, now content, clutched at an earthenware feeding bottle. Mrs. Strupp brought the baby closer.

  She hesitated, then spoke—her words coming out in a rush. “I was thinking, Simon. Maybe it’s not too late for Johnny.”

  “Too late?” I repeated, wanting to follow her.

  “When you meet him, you can try to bring him home,” she pleaded. “He always looked up to you. Maybe you can convince him there’s another way.”

  “You want me to convince him to leave the anarchists?” I said, knowing what she asked was futile.

  But she nodded. “He still thinks of you as a big brother. He’ll listen to you. I know he will.”

  I wasn’t so sure, but I promised to try.

  I glanced at the baby, who sucked at the bottle in grasping, hungry slurps. She had rosy pink cheeks and delicate features; Mrs. Strupp was clearly taking good care of her. It no doubt brought back happy memories, now that her own children were no longer with her.

  I had grabbed my coat and was preparing to say good
-bye when I looked at the baby again. Now done with her bottle, she regarded me with sober brown eyes.

  Hannah’s eyes.

  I took two strides closer and stared, then swore softly under my breath.

  Startled, Mrs. Strupp took a step back, and the baby’s dark-skinned face wrinkled up as if to cry. Mrs. Strupp offered the milk yet again, which worked as a distraction to grab the baby’s interest.

  “Hannah,” I said stupidly. “She has Hannah’s eyes.”

  Mr. Strupp cleared his throat. “And that’s what we call her. Our Hannah. Johnny has rejected everything we believe, but he named her according to our customs. I believe that secretly he still believes; he wants his sister’s spirit to live on in his own child.”

  “His child,” I repeated.

  “Born six months ago,” Mrs. Strupp explained. “We’ve cared for her from the beginning. He claims he’s still close to the mother, but I have no idea. We’ve never met her. I suppose he’s embarrassed to bring her by. Though it wouldn’t matter to us.”

  “So you’ve no idea who she is?”

  “No, though…” She paused a moment, her voice cracking. “Though it would be nice to have some connection…”

  That was when a host of realizations came to me, all at once, jumbled together, with only two facts clear. Jonathan Strupp was a father, and his child was now being raised in Mrs. Strupp’s care.

  Little Hannah—with jet-black hair and my own Hannah’s eyes—stared up at me. It was too much.

  I passed Hans Strupp my card and asked him to call me when he had contacted Jonathan. He would waste no time, I was sure.

  My heart was pounding. It was all I could do to manage a formal good-bye before I raced down the stairs and into the night, my feet carrying me farther and farther away from the long-buried, heartrending memories this night had reawakened.