by Fedora Amis
It’s true. I’m no more than a single illness away from poverty—not even my own illness. What if Mother should . . . ?
The minute Jemmy became sentimental about Mother, she remembered the woman’s tyranny. Mrs. Belinda McBustle, widow, expected a full accounting of Jemmy’s time. This very night she needed good reason to be away from her mother’s boardinghouse and her mother’s prying.
If Father were still alive, he wouldn’t cage me in the way Mother does. He was ahead of his time, and he believed that women have rights and brains. He didn’t hold with private girls’ schools. He wanted me to graduate from a coeducational school. While he lived, he sent me to Peabody School, St. Louis Branch High School No. 3.
Jemmy brushed a tear from the corner of her eye. The tornado of 1896 had destroyed both school and father. The cyclone blew sheltered Jemmy into a rough and gruff world. Every day, she had to make choices, overcome fears, and suffer harsh reality. Jemmy blew her nose, turned up her coat collar, and set her jaw.
CHAPTER FOUR
Friday, November 18, 1898
“Ma’am, I’m Ann O’Nimity from the St. Louis Illuminator. Are you mother to Quisenberry Sproat, the famous boxer?”
A faded woman in a wrapper of washed-out pink roses pushed back a lock of graying hair from her sallow forehead. She reminded Jemmy of wallpaper discolored from years of exposure to the sun. “He’s not here, miss, but I expect him directly. You’re welcome to come in and wait.”
Jemmy’s heart flip-flopped in her chest. Could it be his mother didn’t know? Jemmy took a deep breath and faced an appalling burden. She would have to break the tragic news to the man’s own mother.
She clasped the woman’s arm and steered her to the kitchen. “Why don’t you sit at the table while I make you a nice cup of tea?”
“I don’t like tea. Never have.”
“Cocoa then, or coffee. I could make either.”
“I’ve always liked cocoa.” The woman put her head down on the table next to a quart milk bottle filled with dark liquid. The handwritten label bore the words “Q’s Cordial.” Jemmy smelled it—licorice. Then she understood. Mother Sproat was soused. More accurately, she was in a haze born of homemade laudanum elixir.
Jemmy looked in every cupboard but found no cocoa—just a tin of Arbuckle’s.
“Coffee is all I can find.”
The woman snored softly.
As the aroma of perking coffee began to warm the kitchen, Jemmy poked around the house. The Sproat half of the two-family flat included parlor, dining room, kitchen, and back porch on the first floor. The second floor sported a balcony and three spacious bedrooms. The farthest back belonged to Quisenberry Sproat.
Jemmy wrote down the dates and titles on his boxing trophies. In his wardrobe, she found handsomely tailored suits of clothes all neatly brushed and pressed. In his chest of drawers, piles of white linen underwear and stiffly starched shirts gleamed in immaculate white.
She touched his soft-soled boxing boots, shook out his black wool boxing singlet, marveled at how short his white boxing tights seemed compared to her own legs. Her hands trembled when she touched real leopard skin—the very loincloth he wore in the picture she’d bought.
Her heart beat faster when she sifted through the contents of his desk. She read a letter from Miss Mabel Dewoskin demanding money. She found a paper bag filled with perhaps a dozen brown curls tied with gold ribbon.
She picked up a stack of some twenty trading cards. Scrawled across his picture were these words:
To Helen, the best girl a man ever had,
I’ll be yours forever,
Q.B.
The next card in the stack bore exactly the same handwritten words—and so did the one after that and the one after that. Only the names changed—Hannah, Julia, Martha, Isabel, Ermintrude.
A crash downstairs interrupted her snooping. She replaced the curls but stuffed the letter in her reticule. Still clutching the cards, she scurried down the stairs. Back in the kitchen Mrs. Sproat had fallen from her chair. Jemmy found her snoozing peacefully on the linoleum.
Jemmy prepared two coffees and eased the woman back into her chair. “Thank you, my dear. I came over all dizzy for a time. I’ll be better directly.”
“Drink a little coffee. It always clears my head.”
“How strange. I don’t remember brewing it.”
Jemmy took a deep breath and fixed her mind on the sad task. “Mrs. Sproat . . . it is Mrs. Sproat, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Mrs. Emmeline Sproat, widow.”
“It breaks my heart to bring you such sad news, but your son, Quisenberry, passed away last night.”
“Q.B. isn’t here, but I expect him directly. You’re welcome to stay if you like. I’ve been hoping a nice girl might stop by.”
Jemmy took the woman’s hands in her own. “Q.B. won’t be coming back. He’s with the coroner.”
“I suppose he spent the night with one of his lady friends, but he always comes home next day for clean linen.”
“Q.B. won’t be coming for fresh clothing. He’s gone to meet his maker.”
Mrs. Sproat looked blank.
“Yes, ma’am. Your son is deceased.”
“That’s what the police told me last night, or maybe this morning. Is it still morning?”
Mrs. Sproat had known her son was dead all along. Feeling tricked—and less guilty about stealing Sproat’s letter, Jemmy let go of the woman’s hands. “Would you like to talk about Q.B.?”
“Q.B. isn’t here. I expect him directly though. You’re welcome to wait.”
“Perhaps you could tell me about the lady friends you mentioned. Do you recognize any of these names?” Jemmy spread the trading cards on the table.
“Never met a single one—just smelled perfume on his clothes. One wears Jicky—very hoity-toity. I don’t understand the fuss. Smells like gin and oranges to me.”
“Do you recognize any of these ladies?”
The woman shook her head in the negative.
Jemmy drew the cards into a pack. “Perhaps your son has enemies.”
“My boy? No, everybody loved him. That’s why he was never home—always out with friends.”
“Yesterday, someone beat him badly. Would you have any idea who might do such a thing?”
“He got beat up some by his friends—in the ring, I imagine.”
“This wasn’t from boxing. He had lashes from a whip on his back.”
“You’d better go, now. I have to do his laundry directly.”
“Please, Mrs. Sproat, just one more thing. A little story from his childhood. My colleague wants something nice, something nostalgic, for your son’s obituary.”
“Let me put my head down and think about it. I’ll come up with something directly.”
Jemmy shook the woman’s shoulder. “The story—about Q.B.—tell me the story, please, ma’am.”
“I remember now. Quisenberry must have been seven or eight. Someone told him Frenchmen eat snails and call them some fancy name . . .”
“Escargot.”
“That’s it, escargot. So he washed off a garden snail and swallowed it down. I tried to get him to bring it back up.
“I said, ‘Frenchmen don’t eat the shells.’ He wouldn’t try to throw it up, though. He said he liked to feel it crawling around in his stomach. Ever since, when any little thing hurts him, he blames the snail. ‘Dang snail playing pick-up sticks in my head,’ he’d say. Or, ‘Look what that snail did to my right eye.’ ”
Jemmy didn’t know what use Autley Flinchpaugh would have for the snail tidbit, but at least she’d remembered his demand.
Miss Mabel Dewoskin was easy enough to find. She’d printed her address at the bottom of the letter ordering Quisenberry Sproat to send her money. Jemmy arrived in the lobby of a hotel that had seen better days. It reeked of unwashed cuspidors and musty disappointment.
“I’m a friend of Miss Mabel Dewoskin. Would you be good enough to give me her room number?”
The desk clerk looked up from reading a dime novel to greet her. The man must have slathered his scalp with Macassar oil. His too-long hair left greasy patches on the shoulders of his gray linen jacket. Jemmy thought his signature probably took the shape of a dollar sign.
He wrote something on a slip of paper. “I’m not accustomed to dispensing information about our guests.” The clerk stalled, waited for a tip.
Requests for bribe money annoyed Suetonius Hamm. He personally grilled the reporter who had to resort to paying for information. He often refused to pay. Jemmy did not look forward to those sessions. Still, she would have obliged if she’d had money. Jemmy vowed to learn to read upside down.
“Sir, I’ve come on an errand of mercy. Miss Dewoskin’s fiancé has passed away.” Jemmy dabbed the corner of her eye with her lacy hanky. She reached for the paper.
He placed his palm over the paper and moved it toward her.
Jemmy grabbed the hand and shook it—while neatly slipping away the paper. “Oh, thank you, sir. I’m certain Miss Dewoskin will be more than grateful.”
She wondered whether crime reporter Amadee Boudinier could have accomplished such a slick trick—and gotten away without paying.
While Jemmy climbed four flights of stairs, she imagined her conversation with Miss Dewoskin. Was she a mother-to-be, heavy with the offspring of Quisenberry Sproat—perhaps already a mother to his love child?
Half expecting to hear the sound of a squalling baby, she rapped gently on the door to 405. No answer came. She rapped again. “Miss Dewoskin, may I please speak with you?”
She pounded harder. “Miss Dewoskin, I have something I believe you’d like to see.”
A head in rag curlers popped out from a door down the hall. “Stop that pounding. Most of the people who stay here are actors. We don’t get up until two or three in the afternoon.”
Jemmy pounded again. “Miss Dewoskin, I’m sorry to wake you, but you really must speak with me.”
The woman in curlers clomped to Jemmy in wooden clogs. “Who do you think you are? Making a racket and ignoring me. I’ve a good mind to—”
“I really must speak with Miss Dewoskin.”
“If she were in her room, she’d have answered by now.”
“Would you know where I might find her?”
“You might try the kitchen.”
“Is Miss Dewoskin a cook?”
The woman in curlers smirked. “It may not be food, but you could say she cooks.”
“Thank you, ma’am. I take it the restaurant is downstairs.”
The woman in curlers scratched her armpit. “Take the restaurant. Take anything that isn’t nailed down, but take yourself out of here.”
Back on the first floor, Jemmy walked among bare tables to the back of the hotel. In the kitchen a woman was pouring boiling water into a five-gallon sauerkraut crock. The steam released liquor fumes that stung Jemmy’s nose and made her eyes water.
“Miss Dewoskin, I’m Ann O’Nimity. I write for the St. Louis Illuminator. May I have a word with you about Quisenberry Sproat?”
Jemmy noted the woman’s unearthly appearance from the rear. Scraggly gray hair drooped down her back. The mottled gray tail of some creature waved out from her skirt hem. A fleeting thought passed through Jemmy’s head. Might this gray-tailed hag be an escapee from the netherworld stirring a cauldron of hellfire stew?
No wonder the man at the front desk wanted money. He surely knew Jemmy was lying. This was no dewy-eyed ingénue trapped by a mistake into motherhood. The clerk must have had a good laugh. The only fiancé Mabel could attract would have to be blind and without a working nose.
The woman turned around. Jemmy hardly thought it possible, but Mabel was even uglier in the front. Her face looked gray and streaked—like a corn-shuck doll dragged through fireplace ashes. She might have been a hundred years old, for all Jemmy could tell. Her skin was not just wrinkled; it was furrowed with deep crevices from lips to chin.
“Are you aware Mr. Quisenberry Sproat died last night?”
“News travels faster than a greyhound in the theatre world.”
“Then perhaps you know something about the suspicious circumstances of his death.”
Mabel shook her skirts and kicked at the creature with the tail. It skittered out from her skirts with a high-pitched Mrooow and ran to hide behind one curved foot of the iron stove. All Jemmy saw was a grayish streak, but she supposed the animal was a smallish housecat.
“Why should I tell you anything about Q.B.?”
“The authorities might be interested in your ‘cordial making.’ ”
“What I do is not illegal.”
“Not in itself, perhaps, but city health inspectors might find reason to stop your little manufactory in a hotel restaurant.”
“In case you hadn’t noticed, they already have. They closed this restaurant two years ago for the public welfare. The owners didn’t even try to reopen. They had a close call with fire when one of the residents tried to cook with an alcohol burner in her room. Now the owners let residents use the kitchen—for a fee, of course.”
Jemmy noticed that only two of the room’s cabinets had hasps and padlocks. Newspaper tacked inside the glass door hid the contents of the upper. China cups, food tins, and boxes were plain to see inside all the others. What’s inside that one Mabel doesn’t want seen?
Two lower cabinet doors stood open. Jemmy moved closer to note the labels of big apothecary jars on a shelf—opium, camphor, benzoic acid, oil of anise, glycerin. Another shelf was filled with gallon liquor jugs. Miss Dewoskin seemed to have everything needed to make paregoric. Mabel shut the doors and padlocked them.
“How well did you know Quisenberry Sproat?”
“You’re not the police, though you beat them here. Quite enterprising, I’d say.”
“Were you friends?”
“Enterprise. A fine word. You have an enterprise—getting information. I have an enterprise—making an excellent product to sell.”
“I didn’t come to buy elixir.”
Mabel thrust forward a brown bottle so Jemmy could see it. The handwritten label bore the words Harvest Cordial.
Jemmy shook her head. “I have no money, not even trolley fare.”
“A trade, then. That fancy hat with the ostrich feathers.”
Jemmy touched the soft fronds. “I couldn’t trade this. My dear friend Annie made this hat especially for me. Besides, I can’t go out in a public street without a hat—bareheaded—in winter. No, I can’t trade it for liquor—not that there’s anything wrong with your cordial.”
Mabel danced the bottle side to side as further enticement. At length, she set it on the table and stuck her hands on her hips. “If you won’t help me in my enterprise, I can’t think why I should help you in yours.”
“Perhaps a certain letter you wrote might give you a reason.”
Mabel began a slow walk, steely gaze boring into Jemmy. “Give me the letter.”
“You don’t think I’m foolish enough to bring it with me, do you?”
“Get it. Then we can talk.”
“First we talk. If I’m satisfied, I’ll see you get the letter.”
“And if you’re not satisfied?”
“The letter goes to the authorities.”
The woman raised her hand as if to smack Jemmy’s face with a big wooden ladle. “I have nothing to say but this: if you go to the police, you’ll regret it. Get out. Get out now!”
CHAPTER FIVE
November 18, 1898
Mabel Dewoskin took a step toward Jemmy.
Jemmy began to panic but tried not to show it. She took a slow step backwards.
The creature crept out from under the stove and ducked its head under Mabel’s skirts. That pair suit each other to a tee. That’s the ugliest feline I’ve ever seen. The calico cat’s fur spiked out in dirty gray, black, and orange tufts.
Jemmy backed out through the swinging doors. She muttered under her breath. “Heave
ns in a handbag. I almost ended up in a wrestling match with one of the hags from the Salem witch trials.”
Jemmy’s afternoon fared no better than her morning. She discovered nothing useful for writing a proper follow-up on the Sproat story. She had information enough for an obituary, but the sports reporter was writing that. She sat at her desk, barely tasting her meatloaf sandwich, as she thumbed through Flinchpaugh’s file on Sproat.
Tucked in the folder along with basic biography were a number of clippings. They chronicled Sproat’s prowess in the ring. “Sproat Wins Tenth Bout in a Row.” “Sproat Defeats Benson in Chicago.”
But then came the eye openers. “Sproat Kills Struckhoff.” “Sproat Arrested in Death of Struckhoff.”
Seeking clues, she pored over the articles. They raised more questions than they answered. Quisenberry Sproat and Vincent Struckhoff fought a contest in June. The pair were evenly matched. The fight went on for twenty-seven rounds before Struckhoff simply lay down on the canvas and refused to get up. The ring official declared Sproat the winner. Crowds cheered him on his way to the locker room.
When Struckhoff’s corner men tried to rouse him, they found no heartbeat. No obvious reason presented itself. What caused the man to die?
Could concussion have ruptured something in his brain? That seemed unlikely. The exhausted pair had spent the last six rounds dancing about. They either slogged around looking for openings or grappled with each other until the referee stopped them. Sproat hadn’t landed a punch for half an hour.
Did the young boxer’s heart give out? Not likely. Struckhoff was twenty-two years old and a trained athlete. The coroner ruled it “death by misadventure.”
Still, the St. Louis County sheriff arrested Sproat and kept him in jail until his arraignment. The judge dismissed the case for lack of evidence. Sproat was free, but with a cloud over his head. The Illuminator dubbed him “Sproat the Slaughterer.” That was the last of the clippings. He apparently hadn’t had a bout since June—five months ago. Did Struckhoff’s death kill Sproat’s career?
Questions rumbled through Jemmy’s head all afternoon. She spent two hours writing an article on a local author. Mrs. Kate Chopin had read aloud her stories “A Night in Acadie” and “Polydore” at the Chart Club months earlier. The unpreoccupied Jemmy could have pounded the piece out in twenty minutes.
