Death of a New American--A Novel

by Mariah Fredericks

  “Could be true,” I said, not wanting to prejudice him.

  He waited.

  “I don’t particularly care for Mr. Tyler’s chauffeur.”

  “Tell me why.”

  In as neutral a tone as possible, I recounted Aldo Grimaldi’s argument with Sofia, her statement about what men want, and the fact that Mabel had seen him coming out of Sofia’s room that night.

  “What’s the name again?” he asked.

  “Grimaldi.”

  “Italian.”

  “Yes, but that’s not why I…”

  “Did the police talk to him?”

  “Yes. He told them he had seen the window open at eleven.”

  “And what was he doing looking in the window?” I nodded. “But Tyler doesn’t suspect him.”

  “Mr. Tyler thinks well of his people. Anyone who works for him is wonderful … splendid.” I remembered how he had found me behind the charabanc the day we arrived, the fond stories he told about my time at Mrs. Armslow’s. Foolish, maybe. But sincere. “That’s just the kind of man he is. It’s admirable, but…”

  “You think he’s protecting Grimaldi.”

  “It’s more likely that he doesn’t believe he could be guilty. He’s strangely innocent. Also, since he makes a career out of fighting the Black Hand, he’s anxious people see him as unprejudiced. And men like him don’t believe that men harm women—unless they’re criminals.”

  Behan took that in, then asked, “What did the room look like?”

  “Look like?”

  “Did it look like there’d been a struggle?”

  I thought. The overturned lamp, the broken china dog. “Yes.”

  “Can I see the room?”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  As we walked back up to the house, I wanted to ask Michael Behan if he believed me, if he thought that a man could both love a woman—or think he did—and be capable of killing her. But it seemed an awkward question, and I decided to let the room speak for itself.

  * * *

  The bright light of day made the chaotic, bloodstained scene all the more horrible. The crib had been moved to another room, but the rocking horse, the stuffed rabbit, a pile of freshly laundered diapers were all there. On the rocking chair, a bright shawl of red, yellow, and green. It had to be Sofia’s; no doubt it would be thrown away by the end of the day.

  A little blue smock hung on a peg; seeing it, I thought of Frederick’s heavy, trusting head and swallowed. If only he could talk, the mystery would be solved. Although I would never wish the memory of that night on any child.

  Pointing to the darkest pool of blood on the rug, Behan said, “She was here?”

  I nodded. There was a spray of blood nearby, quite different from the dark, damp patch. Also, I noticed, small dark spatters on the white wood of the changing table, which stood a few feet from where the body had fallen. I pointed them out to Behan.

  “He cut her throat from behind,” he said. “Blood went—” He popped his fingers in the air to replicate the spray.

  “Well, that’s what the Black Hand does, isn’t it? In your articles, you’re always writing about stilettos and slit throats.” Remembering how it had all seemed so entertaining, I felt vaguely ashamed.

  “Sometimes. Guns are also popular.”

  “You wouldn’t bring a gun to a kidnapping, though. You’d want to be as quiet as possible.” I looked to the window; it was closed now. I could see the remains of the powder the police had used to look for prints.

  “The baby was on the floor?” Behan asked.

  “Over there.” I pointed to a spot between the window and where the crib had stood. “It seemed like someone had dropped him in the struggle.”

  “And the window was open…”

  “Yes. It shouldn’t have been. The house is tightly locked up at night, and the windows are always shut.”

  “Keep out the kidnappers and cutthroats?”

  “Yes, but Mrs. Tyler was also concerned with drafts. She lost a child last year and she was very specific with Sofia about the windows staying closed.”

  “And did Sofia always listen?”

  “… Not always.”

  “Why’s that?”

  I took a deep breath. “If she left it open, I think she did it for the baby. She said it was too warm for him. Also for her. She must have thought four floors would be too challenging for a kidnapper, so it would be safe to break the rules.”

  Behan leaned out the window and looked down. I joined him.

  “It would be challenging,” he concluded.

  “William—young Mr. Tyler—says it’s possible. You step there, and there, and then pull yourself up.”

  I waited for Behan to accuse Sofia of something worse than negligence. But stepping back inside the room, he said, “So, kidnapper comes in through the open window, grabs baby…”

  I pointed to the door that connected the nursery and Sofia’s room. “Sofia would have heard the baby cry, come rushing in…”

  “They fight, baby lands on the floor, her throat gets cut…” He looked at me. “Then what?”

  I thought. “We come. The kidnapper hears our feet on the stairs, he hears Mabel’s voice.”

  “Now he can’t take the baby out one of the doors, in case he runs into you…”

  “And he can’t carry him down.”

  “So, he decides to save his own skin and run.” He tilted his head this way and that as if sifting the story. “Nothing wrong with it on the surface.”

  “No.”

  He paced around the room, then said suddenly, “Can I talk to the little girl?”

  Surprised, I said, “Mabel? She’s just a child.”

  “She’s the first person in the house to know something was wrong. I want to know what she heard and when she heard it.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. The Tylers would likely not approve, but Mabel would adore talking to a reporter.

  “All right. But I have to be there when you speak with her.”

  We found Mabel in her room, sitting on her bed, gazing sadly at a half-packed trunk on the floor. Knocking, I opened the door a little wider and said, “Mabel? A friend of mine would like to talk to you.” I glanced back at Mr. Behan, who was straining to get a look. “He’s a reporter. But he’s a kind and polite gentleman, I promise you.” I stepped hard on his foot to emphasize the point.

  Her little face lit up. “Oh, yes.”

  Michael Behan stepped into the room, moving carefully among the child’s toys on the floor. “Hello, Mabel. My name is Michael Behan. I work for The New York Herald.”

  “I’ve seen that newspaper,” said Mabel.

  “You have? Well, you’re a well-informed young lady.” He sat on a chair near the bed. “I’m very sorry about your nanny.”

  “We have to go away because of it. In case they come back.” She struggled a little. “She saved Freddy. You should put that in the newspaper. Sofia saved him. She’s a heroine.”

  “I know she is. But you saved him, too, didn’t you? Miss Prescott tells me you were the one who heard Freddy crying.”

  “I always hear him.”

  “Sure, because you love him.” Not for the first time, I was struck by Michael Behan’s ease with children. “So, you were here, across the hall, when you heard it?”

  She shook her head. “I was in the guest room with Miss Benchley.”

  “Miss Louise,” I supplied. “Mabel fell asleep in her room that night.”

  “Where is that room?”

  “On the second floor.” He nodded, then turned back to Mabel. “So you heard Freddy crying, then what did you do?”

  “I woke up Miss Benchley and she said Jane would know what to do so we went and got Jane.”

  “Not your parents?”

  “They sleep all the way on the other side of the house. Jane was closer, and I wanted to get to Freddy. Also, Miss Benchley thought they wouldn’t like to be woken just because Freddy was crying.”

  �
�Right. So you woke Miss Prescott and told her to come. Mabel, did you hear any voices apart from Freddy’s?”

  “I heard Sofia.”

  I felt a rip in my heart as I thought of Sofia screaming for help. “What did you hear, Mabel?”

  “Just screaming. Maybe I heard No. But I was still sleepy, so I’m not really sure.”

  Behan asked, “Do you remember anything else, Mabel?”

  She shook her head. “Jane told us to go get Father and tell him to get his gun, but by the time we got there—”

  Her face twisted and her eyes filled with tears. Sitting down next to her, I put an arm around her shoulder. “You were very brave, Mabel. And Mr. Behan’s right. You saved Freddy by waking us all up. That’s why the kidnapper had to leave him behind.”

  “But Sofia’s the one—”

  “Mabel…” To distract her, Behan dug a card out of his coat pocket and handed it to her. “Miss Prescott tells me you like newspapers.”

  She nodded.

  “Well, that’s my office, right there. The next time you’re in the city, you come by and see me and I’ll show you the presses. My father worked on the presses. He was a typesetter. Do you know what type is?”

  “It’s the blocks with letters that they use to make words.”

  “Smart girl.”

  As she took the card, Mabel shifted slightly on the bed and I heard the rustle of paper. Looking down, I saw the corner of a newspaper sticking out from the coverlet. Mabel instinctively put her hand over it.

  “What is that, Miss Mabel?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Then you can show it to me.”

  She hesitated. “You won’t tell, will you?”

  “That depends,” I said, holding out my hand.

  Pulling the newspaper from behind her, she handed it to me. “Please don’t take it away. There’s a story about the Moretti trial and I need it for my scrapbook.”

  There was indeed a story about the Moretti trial. An ugly headline screamed, MORETTI THREATENS DEPUTY COMMISSIONER. Dear God, I thought, poor child. No wonder her mother didn’t want her to have newspapers.

  “Where did you get this?” I asked her.

  She hung her head. “Sofia’s room.”

  Sofia’s room? That made no sense. Sofia showed no interest in politics. I gazed at the pages, trying to see what would draw her. An advertisement or—

  Then I noticed something was circled in dark, heavy ink. Folding it carefully, I said, “I’m going to take this, Miss Mabel. When Mr. Moretti is convicted, you can put that article in your scrapbook. This one isn’t worth including in your history.”

  She accepted this, but her gaze didn’t leave the paper. Remembering that she wanted something of Sofia’s, I went quickly down the hall to the nursery and took the shawl from the rocking chair. The little girl recognized it the moment I came back, saying excitedly, “That’s—”

  “Yes, it is,” I said, folding it carefully and tucking it into the bottom shelf of her bureau. “I think she’d want you to have it. But we’ll keep it here, a secret, for now. Yes?”

  “Yes,” said Mabel, probably as thrilled by the secret as she was by the shawl.

  I indicated to Michael Behan that we should leave. He extended his hand, saying, “I hope to see you at the Herald soon, Miss Tyler.”

  Only when we were two floors down and well out of earshot did he say, “What?”

  Opening the paper, I showed him the circled advertisement. It was not for employment—not specifically, at any rate. Men and women looking for companionship or even mates sometimes placed personal ads for people they had seen on the street or on trains, asking for a meeting. It was a habit with some men to become fascinated with young ladies they saw on public transport. Certain newspapers—such as the Herald—printed these ads: “Will lady leaving elevated car, 42nd street, Monday evening communicate with gentleman opposite who tapped her shoe?” Women also advertised. “Refined miss, 18, plump, pretty face, good form, desires acquaintance gentleman of means; object matrimony. Girlish.” Or: “Woman finds paddling her own canoe dreary task. Seeks manly pilot.”

  Recently, there had been an outcry against such ads on the grounds that they were being used for the purposes of prostitution. But the ads still ran. And Sofia had circled one of them.

  It read,

  Hoping to see the dark-eyed miss at noon Wednesday the 20th on uptown 9th Ave elevated. Third car. For your price is far above rubies.

  “I take it Sofia had dark eyes?” Behan guessed.

  “Yes. But she never said anything about going into the city. In fact, she said she was … better here.”

  “Well, sure. You don’t want to go around boasting of meeting strange men on trains.”

  I shook my head. Yes, Sofia had noted that you needed a man to have children, but this sort of flagrant flirtation seemed unlike the girl I knew. It was dangerous, for one thing. Girls had gone hoping for romance and found something quite different.

  “I can’t believe she meant to go.”

  “And yet she circled the ad. Maybe”—he caught my eye—“you didn’t know her as well as you thought.”

  “I never claimed to know her that well,” I said sharply. “She did want children and made jokes about needing a father.… Anyway, it’s the twentieth tomorrow. We should be on that train.”

  “We should.”

  “I knew her, you didn’t.”

  And, I thought, Behan wouldn’t recognize any of the Tyler staff. Just in case one of them happened to show up.

  Or … someone else from the Tyler household.

  * * *

  That night, I found Mr. Benchley alone on the porch after dinner and told him what we had found and what we meant to do. He made no objection, simply reminding me that I should call the house and let Bernadette and the cook know I would be returning for the evening.

  “Or do you think it will be longer than that?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. We probably won’t even recognize the man Sofia was meeting on the train, so it may all be for nothing.” I thought of the chauffeur. “But if we do…”

  Mr. Benchley disliked idle talk, rumination, or even pleasantries. Now he waved a hand to indicate he did not want to hear out any sentence containing the word “if.”

  “You’ll keep me informed,” he said.

  It was a point of departure. Preparing my pleasant leave-taking smile, I was about to turn when Mr. Benchley said, “I have promised Mr. Tyler that Mr. Behan will not be making up stories that do not match the facts. You will of course tell me if it looks like he is breaking our agreement.”

  “Of course. Will Miss Louise be all right when I’m away?”

  “Mrs. Briggs seems very capable. I’m sure she’ll manage for a day.”

  I nodded. But the mention of Michael Behan brought to mind a question that had been nagging me.

  “Mr. Benchley?”

  “Yes?”

  “How did you know Michael Behan wrote about the Black Hand?” There was no answer. “The articles aren’t signed. How did you know they were his?”

  Mr. Benchley brought his fingertips together and seemed to examine the neat symmetry of his hands. “Given my business, I have an obligation to know everything that occurs under my roof.”

  He had read my letters. The reality and the improbability of it struck me at the same time. For a few moments, I struggled. He was my employer. His business was sensitive. What I did reflected on him. Employers had rights, employers had …

  I had rights. That alien idea came screaming into my brain. I had … my letters, my words, my … feelings. He had looked at those, he had read them. I looked at his hands on the desk, imagined them plucking the letter from its envelope, then refolding and sliding it slowly back inside, precise fingers moving over the paper like a spider. I tried to think: What had I said? How shaming was it? What must he think of me?

  He said, “You’re a very intelligent young woman, Jane. I’m sure you understand.” />
  Praise, distracting and emollient. The lowered voice suggesting a confidence, even intimacy. Mrs. Benchley, his daughters—they would not understand. They were not sensible and intelligent. But I was. To me, he could admit freely that he had …

  Read my private letters. I tried to get the anger back, grope my way back to righteousness and rage. But the flame had been doused—by praise. And the lack of knowledge as to how to express such feelings.

  “Yes, Mr. Benchley.”

  * * *

  That night, as I fixed a dragging hem before Louise went into dinner, I apologized for leaving her for a few days.

  “Especially,” I said, “since Mr. William is going back to the city as well.”

  “Oh, didn’t I tell you?” I looked up to see her smiling. “He’s not going after all. He said he didn’t feel right leaving me alone, what with everything that’s happened.”

  “I’m very glad to hear it.”

  9

  Mr. Tyler did not question Mr. Benchley’s assertion that I had to return to the city to fetch some things for Louise. He was the sort of man who accepted that women were strange, changeable creatures who felt sudden passionate needs for random objects. If Mr. Benchley said his daughter was inconsolable without her garnet hair comb, then clearly it must be brought to her.

  O’Hara drove us to the train station. He and Behan immediately struck up that jovial rapport the Irish pride themselves on—saying absolutely nothing as if they were speaking with great wit and insight, simply because they said it loudly. I was on the verge of pointing out that laughing at your own joke for a prolonged period of time does not make the joke funny, even if you do your very best impression of a braying ass, when we came to the station.

  The station was a squat brick building best known for its famous commuter, Theodore Roosevelt. The stucco on the exterior was said to contain actual oyster shells and inside, there was a large fireplace, which was left cold on this spring day. Mr. Behan went straight to the newsstand and bought several newspapers. Joining me on a bench in the waiting area, he examined each of the front pages. And then, almost as an afterthought, asked, “Want one?”