The White City
Page 9
“Thank you,” she whispered, her voice wavering as she clutched her bag to her heart.
He grasped his nephew’s hand and sent Mary a wink, hoping to lighten the mood and ignore the throbbing pain rippling through his body. As soon as the inspector returned, he would request protection for his family. In the meantime, he would find an excuse to stay with them. “Well, I suppose I’m never really off duty, am I? Come on, let’s go see the rest of what the fair has to offer.”
Chapter Nine
“Not knowing when the dawn will come I open every door.”
~Emily Dickinson
Winnifred paused at the corner of South Wallace Street and 63rd and drew a ragged breath as she smoothed down the front of her flawless navy skirt, trying to summon her nerve and ignore her misgivings. Jude’s swollen face and bruises had awakened her from her fanciful musings of the romance of detective work. She was leaving the shelter of her home and placing herself at risk, and she needed to be aware. One sobering glance at Jude was enough to remind her of the danger.
As her will began to crumble, she remembered Jude’s advice to embrace her character. Cordelia Swan wasn’t afraid of anything, let alone a position as a secretary. The thought gave her only a false sense of bravery, but it would have to bolster her enough until she found courage of her own. Straightening her shoulders, she pressed a hand to her plain jabot, feeling for the hard lump underneath her gown where she was secretly wearing her mother’s pearl ring on a ribbon about her neck.
Help me, Lord, she prayed, and used the apartment entrance as instructed to find Mr. Holmes waiting for her on the bottom stair. “Oh, good morning, sir.”
Glancing up from his pocket watch, Mr. Holmes snapped it shut with a smile, tucked it into his striped waistcoat pocket, and extended his hand to her in greeting. “Right on time. I am so glad you are punctual, Miss Swan.”
She accepted his hand. “I am rarely ever late, Mr. Holmes, and I did not intend to start off on the wrong foot today of all days.”
He motioned her up the stairs. “I appreciate that in my workers. As an employee of the Campbell-Yates Company, your position will require a lot of typing, clerical work for the business, and, of course, the signing of your name as my representative on transactions regarding the apartments and the new hotel. Many, many documents and bills cross my desk, and I don’t have the time to sign them all.”
At the third floor, he opened the first door to the office, which had been transformed since last week. There was now only one desk, with a faded Persian rug, two overstuffed chairs, a small side table with a hurricane lamp atop, and red curtains covering the windows. Her desk remained facing the window, the typewriter securely in the middle of the desk, but the larger desk had been moved to where she could barely spot it through the adjoining room’s open door.
“I moved my desk into the turret space to afford us both some privacy for when I have contractors and potential investors over.”
She swallowed, uncomfortable with having him so near and not within her line of sight, but she couldn’t think of a way to suggest rearranging her desk without causing suspicion. Dear Lord, protect me in this position. She tugged off each finger of her gloves before slipping her hat pin from its place and setting her chapeau on the rack by the door. “How lovely.”
“I’m pleased that it is to your liking. I had the furniture brought up from Mrs. Conner’s old room, or the green room I call it now, as I thought that you might be more comfortable if it didn’t look quite so vacant.” He stepped to the window, looking out onto the street below. “If you’d like a settee or anything else, have a look in the green room. It acts as my storage space for furniture, so feel free to decorate from the pickings there. But hopefully the view is to your liking?”
She joined him by the window and looked out to the neighborhood already bustling with people. She purposefully did not look in the direction where Jude was watching the building from his park bench. She calculated her response. “It is quite nice, but if it proves too distracting from my work, I may turn my desk from the window to face the room.” Not wanting to miss her chance to explore, she gave him an enthusiastic smile. “I love what you’ve done with the place, but I may check out the storage room. What kind of woman would I be if I didn’t jump at the chance to do a little shopping?” She winked at him.
She was awarded with a barking laugh. “I knew you would enjoy it. See Auntie Ann, and she will be happy to let you in the room.”
“Thank you for your kindness, Mr. Holmes. You have already proven yourself to be quite the ideal employer.” She clutched her hands in front of her skirt and gave an eager bounce on her toes. “Would you like me to start with the stack of papers on your desk?”
“Those?” He gave a nervous laugh. “Oh no. I’ll have Mr. Owens go over those. Anything I need you to work on, I’ll have Mr. Owens bring it to you or I’ll give it to you myself.”
“Mr. Owens, sir?”
“I forgot to mention that you will share your clerical duties with Mr. Joe Owens. I hired him a couple of weeks ago. He understands the workings of the business a little bit more at this point, so I would prefer that he deal with those particular papers until you are up to speed.”
Winnifred’s instincts pulsed. If there were papers that he did not want her to touch, it was obvious to her that they were in Mr. Holmes’s office.
He shifted through one of the stacks on her desk, thumping the top with his finger. “Sort through and file these. All have been opened by Owens, but he only scanned them. If something needs my attention, make a note and set it aside, but if a letter simply requires a signature, I would prefer not to be bothered. I am often away attending to business, and when I am in my office, I will be focusing on getting my hotel up and running, which is the main reason why you have been hired. You are to get me to a place in my paperwork where I can concentrate solely on the hotel. I have a lot of funds tied up in this building and there are many people I do not want to disappoint.”
She tucked her hands behind her skirt and nodded. “I will do my best, sir, to have your office organized as soon as possible.”
“Thank you. Now, did you have a chance to fill out those insurance papers? I know it sounds rather eccentric, but as a precaution, I require each and every one of my employees to carry an insurance policy in case the worst should happen.”
She retrieved the folded papers from her black reticule and handed them to him. “I don’t have any next of kin, so whom should I sign the money to should something happen? My beau and I had a disagreement and aren’t speaking at the moment. I’m not sure if we will recover from it.”
He rubbed a hand over his mustache and shrugged as he spread the papers on her desk. “I suppose you could put my name down for now and amend it when you can think of someone suitable.”
She inwardly cringed as she bent to fill out the last line, but if she signed it as Cordelia Swan, she supposed it wouldn’t be illegal, since she had the sanction of her father. Signing her alias with a flourish, she handed the documents back to him, feeling as if she had signed her life away. Well, if I was trying to give him an incentive to kill me, I just did.
“I will notarize it and have it sent to the insurance office to be filed by this afternoon.” He crossed the room to the adjoining door. “I’ll be here this morning if you have any questions, but most of the time, Mr. Owens will be on hand to answer on my behalf.”
Winnifred filtered through the first stack, sorting them into piles of bills and contracts and receipts, humming to herself as she imagined Cordelia would be likely to do as she searched for any clue of nefarious activity.
After nearly three hours of categorizing, she was beginning to feel uncomfortable with the amount of water she had been sipping, but Holmes had yet to leave, giving her a moment to quietly seek the necessary. Feeling a blush creeping into her cheeks, she murmured an excuse about visiting the kitchen for more water and rose from her chair, stepping out of the office. Following the hal
lway, she tentatively opened doors to empty rooms and rooms with sparse furnishings. Finding a space without windows, she heard a throat clear behind her.
Auntie Ann adjusted her grip on the tray filled with dirty dishware, a scowl furrowing her forehead. “Miss Swan, what on earth are you about?”
Winnifred blushed, not wanting to mention her state, but seeing no way out of it, she cleared her throat. “I seem to have forgotten where the necessary is located. There are so many doors up here. Could you point it out to me?”
Auntie Ann motioned back down the hall toward the landing. “We use the facilities on the second floor. The upstairs is still under construction. Follow me.”
The steps creaked beneath their feet, proclaiming their route to the whole floor. She waved her down the hall. “Second door on your left.”
“And the green room?” At Auntie Ann’s pointed look, Winnifred added, “Mr. Holmes said I might check and see what furniture I could use for the office.”
Auntie Ann patted the chatelaine at her waist, keys rattling from the chain. “It’s the first door on the left, but come and see me when you are ready and I’ll open it for you.”
Alone at last, Winnifred rested her head in her hands and sighed, her shoulders sagging from the pressure of appearing composed all morning while keeping up her alias. She poured the pitcher of water into the porcelain basin and rinsed off her face, enjoying the coolness against her flushed cheeks. The hair caressing her face curled from the dampness as she dried her face with the less than clean white towel.
Smoothing her modest lace collar, she tugged on her ivory cuffs and peeked into the kitchen where Auntie Ann was already wrist deep in dough, pounding it into a mound of flour on the table, shaking the floor with her strength and making Winnifred take note of the instability of the second floor.
“Would you mind opening the green room for me now, Miss Ann?”
She grunted, dusting off her hands as they headed to the locked door. “Everyone calls me Auntie Ann, so don’t be giving off airs by adding a ‘miss’ in front of my name.” She harrumphed as she found the key that unlocked the door. “I don’t know why he decided to switch the name of this room. To me, it will always be Mrs. Julia Conner’s room.”
“Where is Mrs. Conner now?”
“Gone. Mind yourself. Lots of boxes in here that could easily topple over and crush a little thing like you,” she warned.
Winnifred massaged the palms of her hands. “So, um, how long have you been working for Mr. Holmes?”
“Long enough to know that you best not flirt with your employer. The last two little girls who worked for him were all kinds of in love with Mr. Holmes, and both even went on to say that they were going to get married.” She pushed the door open. The room was piled high with crates and Queen Anne chairs stacked on one another along with white cloths covering massive pieces of furniture.
“Oh? And what happened?” Winnifred asked, feeling slightly admonished for her alluring smiles to Holmes, but then instantly remembering that she was there to do a job and flirting with Holmes was part of it.
“Do you see them about?” She waved her hand around the room. “I have a hearty suspicion that Mrs. Conner had her eye on Holmes as well. Think that is why her husband left, but I’m surprised he left his daughter behind too. A pretty little thing she was.” Auntie Ann surveyed the room, picking through a crate of blue-and-white dishes before curling her lip at a chipped edge and returning it to its nest of straw.
“Was?” Winnifred lifted one of the white sheets to find a worn leather wingback chair. “What do you mean was?”
“They seemed to disappear overnight. Holmes said that Mrs. Julia Conner left in quite a state with little Pearl in tow, but the strange thing is that she left behind most all of her things.” She shook her head. “Doesn’t seem like a lady would leave behind her toiletries.”
Winnifred’s skin prickled at this, but before she could ask another question, Auntie Ann dusted off her hands and moved for the door, calling over her shoulder, “I’ll be in the kitchen. Let me know when I can lock up.”
A cloud of dust billowed beneath her skirts, creating the illusion of fog as Winnifred ambled about the room, searching. She opened the closet door and paused at the sight of a china-headed stuffed doll, tucked haphazardly in a small wooden box. Kneeling down, she scooped the doll into her hand, remembering the doll her own mother had given her. If she had lost it as a child, she would have been devastated. She never would have parted from it, even if the house was on fire. Her gaze fell to the left of the box onto something rusty in color. Is that paint? She ran her finger over it and a tiny bit rubbed onto her skin. She had read enough novels to know what it was. Winnifred’s stomach roiled as she pressed her hand to her mouth. Blood.
Chapter Ten
“Anxiety is good for nothing if we can’t turn it into a defense.”
~George Eliot, Daniel Deronda
Jude eyed the targets on the manicured meadow of the Covington’s vast country estate. After Winnifred’s discovery yesterday, he’d cleared his afternoon schedule for shooting practice with Percival Covington. If he hadn’t truly believed she was in danger, he would have excused himself from attending the practice and avoided the awkwardness of being a third to a courting couple’s outing, but as it was his job to ensure that Winnifred had the proper skills for defending herself, he set aside his feelings and focused on the task at hand.
Percy rested his hand on the puffed sleeve of Winifred’s red blazer, pointing to one of the targets in the field. “Normally, I would use this target for long-range practice, but since we are working on defense, I figured it would be best if we stepped closer.”
Jude inwardly cringed at the obvious conclusion, but was thankful that at least Percy provided a distraction for the reason why Winnifred would need time to practice. If she had indeed found blood in the room of the mother and child who had disappeared, Holmes may be far more dangerous than the inspector or anyone had believed.
As he watched her laugh with Percy over something, his thoughts began to drift, but instead of traveling to Victor’s case, he found them wandering to Winnifred and how the sun caught her golden locks and her laughter rippled in the air and the way her fine eyes sparkled at him when he said something she found humorous. And how she always buried her nose in a book every chance she got. He was confident that if she took only a moment to look up from her pages, she would find herself inundated with suitors.
“What do you say, Detective?” Percy called to him, breaking Jude’s reverie. “Shall we make this a bit more challenging? Have a competition of sorts?”
Winnifred clapped her hands. “Oh, I like the sound of that. Detective Thorpe, are you up for a bit of shooting?”
“Are you sure you want me to join in? It would hardly be fair with all the practice I’ve had over the years,” Jude replied, not wishing to quash the fun of a competition between the couple.
Winnifred’s mouth twisted in what looked to be suppressed mirth. “That’s very benevolent of you, but I think it will be more than fair. What do you say, shall we go shot for shot? The first time someone misses, they are eliminated. The last one standing wins.”
Jude stuffed his hands into his pockets, seeing no polite way out of the competition without insulting her. He held back a sigh and slowly nodded, thinking he would go easy on Winnifred to bolster her confidence.
“Perfect. Shall we make it even more interesting with a prize?” Percy selected a revolver from the small table that held their weapons.
Curiosity piqued, Jude asked, “What kind of prize?”
Percy turned his weapon over in his hands, examining it. “If you or Miss Wylde wins, you will have the honor of naming the hero in my next novel.”
Jude grinned, stepping up to the table. “I think that sounds like a fine idea.” This is going to be quite entertaining after all.
Winnifred shot him a sly smile. “Sounds like you won’t be throwing the match now?”
“You wouldn’t!” Winnifred smothered her laughter with her hand.
Percy rubbed his hand over his face with an exaggerated groan. “That, my friend, might be the worst name I have heard to date for one of my male leads. And judging by Miss Wylde’s reaction, I’m not sure it will go over so well with the ladies.”
“Well, one of you will just have to win is all.” Jude chuckled at this turn of events. “And Mr. Covington, what would your prize be should you win?” He asked out of politeness.
“Why, the glory of besting an inspector’s daughter and one of New York’s and now Chicago’s finest detectives.” Brandishing his weapon in a circle above his head, Percy shouted, “Lady and gentleman, take your places for the first annual game of glory!” Percy gave Winnifred a flourished bow. “Shall the lady go first?”
For her answer, Winnifred planted her feet in a wide stance. Turning her shoulders, she gripped the pearl handle of one of Percy’s smaller revolvers in one hand and wrapped the other on top with her finger resting right outside the trigger as she aimed. Even if she didn’t make her first shot, Jude was already impressed with her stance. Closing one eye, she moved her finger to the trigger and a crack filled the air as a puff of smoke drifted from the barrel. She had hit the target dead center.
Setting the gun on the table, she gave a happy twirl and looked up at him. “One of these days, you will stop underestimating me, Detective Thorpe.”
Jude returned her grin, but before he could reply, Mr. Covington stepped up beside her to take his place.
“Well, I must say I am quite impressed, Miss Wylde, and I hope I never cease being surprised by your talents,” he said before taking aim and making his shot.
Blast. Winnifred lowered her firearm, her cheeks burning from missing such an easy shot on the fifth round of the game. She couldn’t blame Jude’s presence for distracting her. She had not taken the proper time to aim, and she was dismayed to think that she would have even less time in the moment should Holmes attack her. If she missed this shot, how could she defend herself if it came down to it? She shook her head. Her father would have been shocked by her mistake.