“Out in the alley. She shouted—what have you done? She must’ve thought I’d killed him.” She pressed her lips together. “I panicked—I mean, Mr. Shaw was dead and here I’d come screaming out of the building like I was guilty—and shoved her. Really hard. She fell and smacked her head on the ground, knocked her cold. I was scared half to death you’d figure out what had happened. Or she would tell you. I thought it was a stroke of luck that she’d forgotten everything.”
How long had Mina lain in that alleyway, drifting in and out of consciousness? Finally rousing herself, but leaving her blue shawl behind. “The luck was that her fall didn’t kill her, Miss DiPaolo.”
She took to staring at the floor again.
“Did you leave the key to the private entrance in Mina’s pocket?” Nick asked. Mrs. Davies’s solution to the question.
She nodded. She’d supposedly been half-crazed with fear after finding Shaw dead, but clearheaded enough to leave an incriminating piece of evidence with the woman whose biggest mistake had been to worry about Giulia DiPaolo.
“Leonard Shaw came to Bauman’s last night. To talk to you?”
“I’d sent a message, asking him to stop in,” she said. “He hadn’t been by the saloon in days, and I wanted to explain what had happened Wednesday night. He wouldn’t listen. He told me we were finished.”
“Mighty coldhearted, miss,” said Taylor, sympathizing. Clearly, he believed her story; Nick wasn’t convinced.
“Rebecca believed me, though,” she said. “That I hadn’t killer her father.”
She had been the woman Mrs. Davies had spotted with Rebecca Shaw. “You spoke with her early yesterday morning?”
“I did. We spoke for a long while, and it was her idea to try to talk to Leo again. At the cemetery today. But he wouldn’t even look at me. I may as well have been one of the statues.” The tears she’d been holding back welled in her eyes and she began to cry. “I may as well have been dead.”
“Now, miss, it’s gonna be okay,” soothed Taylor.
Nick exhaled and waited for Miss DiPaolo to regain her composure.
“If you didn’t kill Ambrose Shaw, Miss DiPaolo, who did?” he asked. “Leonard? He stood to inherit a lot of money, plus his alibi isn’t holding up. He left his meeting of the San Francisco Club early. Really early.”
“He wasn’t at the Parker House Wednesday night?”
“He’s told me he left early because he had a meeting with a lady friend, Miss DiPaolo,” said Nick. “I take it that lady friend wasn’t you.”
“He lied to me, lied to my face when he stopped in the saloon last night. Said he still cared, even with that document, but it was going to be impossible for us to ever be together.” She let out a mirthless chuckle. “Impossible to be together because he’s fallen in love with someone else.”
Probably so, thought Nick. “Miss Campbell gave you that key, but could she have made a copy for herself? She despised Shaw,” he said. “Maybe she got to him before you showed up in Shaw’s room. Knew you’d be arriving there soon and might take the fall for the crime.”
“No.” She shook her head, maybe hoping the rapid motion would dislodge the thought he’d put there. “Libby hated Ambrose, but she’d never kill somebody.”
“She’s told an associate she was with Elliot Blanchard Wednesday evening.” All of their suspects tangled together like coiled barbed wire. Or a writhing mass of snakes.
“That’s where she’d gone . . .” Her eyes met his. “I didn’t kill Mr. Shaw, Detective, and I didn’t kill Althea. She was a friend, one of the few I have. I’d never hurt her.”
“Did she spot you running out of Shaw’s room?”
“She couldn’t have seen me, Detective. She was downstairs when I snuck in through the side door. I heard her voice, echoing along the ground-floor passageway, and that’s the truth,” she said. “But I did lie to you about spying that redheaded fellow in the alley yesterday morning. I’d seen him at the Institute when Libby took me there to show me the side entrance. Why not blame him?”
“Because he’s locked up right now, accused of murder based on your false claim, but might actually be innocent?” asked Nick, getting hot with anger. He didn’t much like Platt, but he didn’t want the man to hang for a crime he hadn’t committed.
“I shouldn’t have. I know,” she said. “I did hear noises around the time Mrs. Wynn was murdered, but I didn’t get up and look out the window like I said.”
“You wanted us to believe you’d heard a man’s voice because you were actually afraid one of your friends was responsible, weren’t you, Miss DiPaolo?”
She covered her mouth with her hand; it was shaking, hard. “For a moment I was.”
Nick studied Giulia DiPaolo, her ashen complexion, her anxious trembling. Damn, but her story made sense. Unfortunately, it brought them no closer to figuring out who had killed Shaw.
He pushed back from his desk. “Taylor, escort Miss DiPaolo home.”
She didn’t move, bewilderment at her unexpected release leaving her glued to her chair. “I’m free to go?”
“I could arrest you for assault, but I have a feeling Mina Cascarino won’t press charges.”
Miss DiPaolo slowly rose to her feet. “I don’t know who killed Ambrose Shaw, Detective. I wish I did.”
“I’m going to trust you for now, Miss DiPaolo, but don’t make any plans to leave town. We’ll be keeping an eye on you, in case you get any ideas along those lines,” said Nick, standing. “And you might want to watch your back, miss. Because if you’re innocent, that means a murderer is still on the loose. And if that person knew where to find Mrs. Wynn, they know where to find you.”
Chapter 20
“Did Miss DiPaolo say anything else to you, Taylor?” Nick asked his assistant, returned from escorting the young woman to her boardinghouse.
“No, sir,” he replied, settling in next to Nick, who leaned against the iron fence surrounding Portsmouth Square. “Other than to ask me why you let her go free.”
“I did because of what she told us. She admitted to causing Mina’s concussion and planting the key on her. She also admitted to lying about seeing Platt yesterday morning,” he said. “In my experience, Taylor, that’s not what folks guilty of murder do. They don’t admit anything.”
“Suppose so, sir.”
Nick resumed his contemplation of the square. It was quiet, aside from the whinny of horses tethered to the line of cabs waiting for passengers, the tap of a gentleman’s walking stick on the sidewalk passing in front of City Hall at Nick’s back, a steamer whistle echoing up from the bay. The corner barker’s cries had halted, the fellow either having given up on luring customers into the store or gone off to lunch. Nick liked to come out here and stare at the patch of dusty grass and shrubs. Enough green to help him think.
“Well, Miss DiPaolo couldn’t have been the intruder Mrs. Wynn saw at seven thirty,” said his assistant, scanning the entrances of the neighboring saloons, on the alert for any evidence of midday rowdies. The Bella Union Melodeon wouldn’t open for another few hours, giving Taylor one less business to scrutinize. “So who did she see?”
“Maybe nobody.”
“Mrs. Wynn lied to us?”
Nick didn’t have to look at Taylor’s face to know he was wrinkling his forehead; he could hear the confusion in his assistant’s voice.
“All right, Taylor, let’s reconstruct events, based on what we’ve been told.” He drew in a breath, catching a whiff of fish frying at a nearby restaurant, and thought back on what they knew. Or had been told. “At ten before six, Mary Ann Newcomb takes a tray of food to Shaw, who’s having his meal upstairs. She returns to the kitchen to finish preparing dinner, where she encounters Mrs. Wynn, enquiring about the evening’s menu. The patients begin gathering a few minutes after six and Miss Newcomb serves dinner.”
“Around six fifteen, right?”
“Correct,” he said. “Mrs. Wynn gets into a fight with one of the male patients and storms upstairs abo
ut fifteen minutes later, claiming to notice Shaw—alive—in the small parlor on the way to her room. Here’s our first problem, Taylor—how long does it take you to eat a meal by yourself? Forty minutes?”
“Fifteen, twenty, maybe?” Taylor answered. “Although I do eat fast. Just ask Miss Ferg . . . ahem, friends of mine.”
“Taylor, you can say Addie Ferguson’s name around me, you know.”
“I just presume you don’t want to be reminded of Mrs. Davies and all, sir.”
“Don’t worry about that, Taylor,” said Nick. He always thought about the war; he’d always think about Celia Davies, too. “So, where was I? Ah, Mrs. Wynn’s claim that she’d seen Shaw loitering in the parlor at six thirty should’ve been my first clue that she wasn’t being fully honest.”
“Why lie, sir?” asked Taylor.
“Because he wasn’t alive then, but she wanted us to think he was?” proposed Nick. He was trusting his instincts on this case, hoping they wouldn’t fail him.
“If she’d lied about Mr. Shaw still being alive, sir, then there might not have been an intruder at seven thirty, either.”
“Precisely,” agreed Nick. “Back to our timeline. Mina Cascarino departs Bauman’s, around six thirty, worried about what Giulia DiPaolo is up to.”
“If Miss Mina went straight to the Hygienic Institute, she would’ve gotten there in about ten minutes,” said Taylor.
“Or fifteen,” said Nick. “Miss DiPaolo is bound for the Institute with a key Miss Campbell has supplied. She enters the building around six forty-five, hears Mrs. Wynn’s voice from the kitchen. The woman had returned there after a few minutes spent upstairs.”
“Miss Newcomb did also say that Mrs. Wynn was in the kitchen from around then until about seven thirty,” said Taylor, bending down to scrape a match across the ground in order to light a cigar.
“Therefore, that part of Miss DiPaolo’s story is corroborated by another witness,” said Nick. “She makes her way to Shaw’s suite only to find him dead.”
“She claims.”
Nick looked over. “I thought you were rather sweet on her, Taylor, and believed her story.”
He blushed. “Me? Sweet on Miss Giulia? I just like her singing, that’s all, sir.”
“Anyway, let’s presume she’s telling the truth.” Nick glanced over at the gentlemen’s clothing store. A different fellow had come to stand outside it, proceeding to sing praises about their supply of satinet pants and pilot cloth jackets. “Miss DiPaolo’s not in the building long, running outside and bumping into Mina, who’s tracked her down. In thanks for worrying about Giulia, the woman attacks Mina, who hits her head. Miss DiPaolo plants the key on her and rushes to the saloon, arriving around seven, according to Bauman.”
“I’m glad Miss Mina’s not guilty, sir,” said Taylor, cigar smoke drifting on the air, sweet and pungent.
So was he. “Oblivious to the assault out in the side alley, the Institute’s male guests finish their dinner and retire to the parlor,” said Nick. “Meanwhile, Platt arrives at work around seven and meets with Ross to discuss their overnight guests. Their meeting concludes and Ross heads home. In the parlor, the male patients proceed to break a crystal pitcher, causing Mary Ann and Platt to chase them off in order to clean up the mess. Platt tells Mary Ann he has matters under control and she’s free to go. Not long after, Mrs. Wynn comes shrieking back downstairs claiming to have spotted an intruder. It’s now just past seven thirty.”
“An intruder who might never have actually existed, because she’d wanted to blame stealing that watch on somebody else.”
“Right,” said Nick. “Platt sends for Ross, who summons the police. Mina, suffering from a concussion, manages to stumble home between seven thirty and eight.” Where I then accused her of killing Ambrose Shaw.
“Sir, don’t you think it’s possible Mrs. Wynn did spot Miss DiPaolo sneaking in—or out—of the building and gave us a false time in order to protect her friend?” asked his assistant. “When Mrs. Wynn went into Mr. Shaw’s room to steal his watch and saw he was dead, she about had to conclude Miss DiPaolo had killed him.”
“Maybe she did, Taylor,” he said.
“Hmm.” Taylor puffed on his cigar for a few seconds before plucking it from his mouth. “What should we do about Mr. Platt?”
“Leave him in his cell for now,” said Nick. Across the way, a fellow slowed and halted in front of the gentlemen’s clothing store, the barker taking advantage of the man’s potential interest to snag his coat sleeve and drag him inside. Glad one of us is having good luck today. “None of this is resolved yet. None of it.”
“So who was it who’d soaked that handkerchief with chloroform and tossed out that bottle?” His assistant resumed smoking his cigar and talked around it. “If Giulia DiPaolo’s not responsible.”
Nick shifted on his hip to face his assistant. “You know, Taylor, the handkerchief Miss DiPaolo brought with her to the station wasn’t like the one Harris found. Hers was simple cotton. The handkerchief underneath Shaw was a good-quality, embroidered linen.” A fancy gray pattern decorating the edges. “Harris and I assumed it was one he’d brought with him, as nice as it was. But what if it wasn’t?”
“Miss DiPaolo wouldn’t have doused an expensive handkerchief in chloroform if she had cheaper ones on hand,” said Taylor. “Meaning she really is telling the truth about finding Mr. Shaw dead.”
His comment spurred a memory. Damn. “I’ve seen stacks of fine linen handkerchiefs elsewhere, Taylor.”
“Like the one in Mr. Shaw’s room?”
“Not an exact match, but if we search again, maybe we’ll come across one just like it.”
“Where at, sir?” asked Taylor, stubbing out his cigar.
“At the Hygienic Institute,” he said. “In a supply closet.”
• • •
Twenty minutes.
Not much time to discover where a supply of chloroform might be stored.
She should have more seriously considered Mr. Ross’s culpability, rather than imagine a man with so much to lose by having a guest perish at his water-cure establishment meant he was an unlikely candidate. Mrs. Wynn must have discerned he was the intruder—except he hadn’t been intruding at all—lied about not recognizing the person, and sought to escape the city in hopes of saving her life. Except he had uncovered her plans and prevented her.
“In a very cruel fashion,” whispered Celia, leaning through the dining room doorway and casting a glance in the direction of the kitchen. A heavy utensil tapped against the edge of a pot, and Mary Ann muttered to herself. The cook had returned from the basement where Jane was receiving her treatment. At the hands of the fellow who may be a murderer.
Jane will be safe. Mr. Ross had no reason to suspect she was involved in the case and would not harm her. I must not worry.
Where, though, would the final proof required to convict the man be located? A storage cupboard, likely downstairs near the treatment area. Which would take Celia perilously close to the room where Jane would be soaking in a hot-water bath. Mr. Ross would not stay with her, though, and could be wandering about anywhere.
Celia tiptoed from the dining room, her heart beating a rat-a-tat against her ribs for fear her heels might strike the checkerboard marble floor. She reached the staircase without incident, however, and stole down. The air turned damper, smelled faintly dank. But the hallway was bright, the walls whitewashed and lit by gas lamps. To her left were the treatment rooms, every door closed but clearly labeled in large, florid black lettering. Steam Bath, Electro Thermal Bath, Vapor Bath, read the nearest. Jane must be farther along the hall. Celia listened for voices and heard only the faraway drip of water. Perhaps Mr. Ross had returned to the main floor. Giving Celia the only opportunity she’d have to locate the storage cupboard.
“Which needs to be unlocked and containing incriminating bottles of chloroform,” she whispered to herself.
She turned right, hugging the wall as she passed more doors, thes
e unmarked. She sped along the passageway, searching for the cupboard that had to exist, feeling sweat rise along her hairline. At last, she came upon a narrow door at the very end, its sign reading Supplies—Private.
Here goes nothing.
To her utter astonishment, the door was unlocked. Celia stepped inside and shut the door behind her. The room was dark, the blinds on the cupboard’s small window closed tight, and she took a precious few moments to allow her eyes to adjust. She hadn’t much time at all; within minutes, the soup would be ready and the cook would be delivering it to the dining room. Expecting to find Celia waiting.
As quickly as she could, she rummaged through the items stacked upon the shelving that lined both walls. Towels, rags and scrubbing brushes, spare necessities for guests who may have forgotten to bring the items from home—hair nets and horn combs, packages of tooth powders, an open box of linen handkerchiefs interspersed with bits of camphor to ward off moths. No bottles of chloroform, however.
She turned to the other shelves, holding more of the same. Putty powder for cleaning grates. A quantity of hearthstones for whitening doorsteps and windowsills. Candles and colorful paper boxes of washing soaps and starch. She bent down, hastily moving aside a short pile of blankets on a lower shelf. They collided with an object, which tipped off the shelf. A tin of pulverized sand for scouring floors that clanged to the ground.
“Blast!” she hissed and rushed over to the door. She pressed her ear against the wood, straining to hear the footsteps she anticipated would be running down the hall. Nothing.
Letting herself breathe again, she resumed searching through the shelves. Each passing second was forcing her to accept she might not find the evidence she hunted for. She knelt and reached between a set of coverlets, each one carefully wrapped in sheets of paper sprinkled with spirits of turpentine. The smell made her eyes water, but the effort was worth it.
“Aha!” she exclaimed, withdrawing the clear glass bottle she’d found at the very back, its caoutchouc stopper sealed with a glued strip of unbroken paper, the label on its front proclaiming the contents to be Chloroform.
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