The Death Beat

by Fiona Veitch Smith

  Kat threw a towel at Mimi. “Clean yourself up.”

  The Jewish girl, her shoulders slumped, turned towards the communal bathroom. But before she reached the door the imbecile – the feebleminded sister – came out of the dormitory, rubbing sleep from her eyes.

  “Mimi! What wrong, Mimi!” She ran to her sister and threw her arms around her.

  “Pathetic!” spat Kat. “You’re both pathetic.”

  It was nearly lunchtime when Poppy finally crossed the threshold at Rollo’s place. Back at The Lodge she had to wait for the cab, then be waved off by a guilty-looking Delilah and a polite-but-cool Toby (from whom she’d had to borrow money for the journey). Then there was a nearly three-hour train ride from Ronkonkoma Station to Manhattan, stopping, painfully, at every little platform between the lake and Queens, before eventually chugging into Pennsylvania Station. Then, after asking for further directions, she’d found her way to the 34th Street subway and taken the train uptown to 57th Street with a short, but confusing, connection to Fifth Avenue (after first getting on the wrong train and heading a couple of stops in the wrong direction), until finally emerging at the south end of Central Park and catching a trolley to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Exhausted, Poppy walked the final block to the Rolandsons’ 82nd Street townhouse, by which time all she wanted to do was have a bath and catch up on some sleep. But there was far too much to do.

  Mr Morrison, the butler, let her in with a “Good afternoon, ma’am”. He looked nearly as exhausted as Poppy. The empty crate of champagne bottles waiting to be taken out to the trash suggested the reason. Poor Morrison, thought Poppy, having a last-minute party thrust on him like that.

  But Rollo, descending the stairs on the stair-lift like a god in a Greek play, looked as bright as a button as he declared: “Welcome home, Miz Denby! I thought you were never going to get here! Get yourself a bite to eat – Morrison, help her, will ya? – then come into the study. I’ve got lots to tell you!”

  Then he alighted from the lift and all but skipped down the hall, whistling “Yanky Doodle Dandy”. Despite herself, Poppy smiled. “Good party?” she asked Morrison.

  “Mr Rolandson seemed to enjoy himself,” came the circumspect reply as the butler helped Poppy out of her borrowed coat.

  “Is my aunt in?”

  “She isn’t, ma’am. She and Miz King are having luncheon at the Algonquin, I believe. Apparently she’s been invited as a guest at the Round Table.”

  “The Round Table?” asked Poppy. “What’s that?”

  The butler sniffed as he hung up the coat. “Your guess is as good as mine, ma’am.”

  “Ah,” said Poppy. “No doubt we’ll find out soon enough.”

  Half an hour later and Poppy was washed and changed and eating a crab sandwich provided by Morrison. Once she’d finished the last delicious morsel she found her way to the study where Rollo was sitting in a winged leather armchair, smoking a cigar and reading the Saturday edition of The New York Times.

  “Well, that’s good to know,” he said, indicating that Poppy should take a seat next to him.

  “What’s that?” she asked, shifting a pile of un-shelved books from the nearest chair.

  “Australia won’t be going to war with us after all.”

  “Oh,” said Poppy. “I didn’t know they were planning to.”

  “Some rags down under thought they might declare war on the United States because of the Anglo–Japanese trade agreement. But apparently not.”

  “Well, that’s a relief,” Poppy grinned and settled down on the chair. “Anything else of interest?”

  Rollo flicked to page three. “A fur factory has burned down just over the river in Newark. I remember attending the opening of it. Five storeys. $300,000 damage, and hundreds of workers out on the street. Oh, and a dead dog.”

  “A dead dog?”

  “Yes, apparently it raised the alarm but couldn’t get out.”

  Poppy sighed. “That’s sad.”

  “Yes it is,” said Rollo, “but what’s even more sad are the conditions these people were working under. I’m surprised the place didn’t go up in flames earlier. And the blighters were darned lucky they weren’t locked in.”

  “Good heavens! Do they do that?”

  “At some of these places, yes. That’s why there’s so much industrial action at the moment in the garment industry. Like these women in Boston.” He pointed to a smaller article further down the page headlined “Women Strikers in Fight”.

  “Is it happening in New York too?” asked Poppy.

  “Oh yes,” said Rollo. “The city’s health and safety executive is trying to put pressure on the owners to clean up their act; but you know what it’s like – better conditions cut into profits…”

  Poppy knew exactly what it was like. It was one of the things the miners in England were striking against. She wondered for a moment how Ike Garfield was getting on covering it all for the Globe and, with a tinge of guilt, how her parents were managing running the soup kitchen up at Ashington Colliery.

  “Do you think there might be a nationwide strike here too?” she asked.

  Rollo shook his head. “No, it’s different here. It’s not a national industry. And it mainly employs poor women. And no offence, Miz Denby, but not many people care about them.”

  Poppy sighed again. She knew Rollo did not share those views of women. But there were too many men – and women – who did.

  “Besides,” he added, “most of them are immigrants, a few of them illegal. And not many people care if they live or die. And if they die, well…” he splayed his large hands, “there was no record of them in the first place.”

  Poppy’s ears had pricked at the phrase “illegal immigrants”. “Funny you should mention that,” she said and went on to tell him everything that had happened at the Spencer lodge.

  “Jake, Mary, and Jehoshaphat!” declared Rollo. “You telling me that a girl was raped at a US senator’s holiday home and his son denied that it ever happened?”

  “That’s what it looks like, yes.”

  “What a story!” said Rollo, his eyes twinkling.

  Poppy frowned. “Rollo…”

  He raised his hands. “I know, I know, I’m sorry. It’s terrible what’s happened to her – and we must try to help her if we can – but I’m not sorry that you might have stumbled onto a cracking news story. Miz Denby, I think your days on the Death Beat and mine in copy tasting might be numbered.” He rubbed his hands together.

  Poppy folded her hands in her lap. “That’s all well and good, Rollo, but I don’t really know what happened. I just have my suspicions. And unless I can find the girl and get her to tell me the details, I’m not sure we have a story.”

  Rollo chewed on his lip. “True, true. We’ll need a bit more before we can go to editor Quinn with this. Do you have any ideas how you might follow it up?”

  Poppy unfolded her hands and smoothed down her skirt. “I’m thinking of going to the Carter offices on Monday. The girl came over on the same ship as us. Perhaps they can tell me what happened to her when she arrived. If she was turned away – she and her sister – there should be some record of them returning to Southampton. Don’t they have to go back on the same ship?”

  Rollo nodded. “I think that’s how it works, yes. Good thinking, Miz Denby. And I’ll see if I can probe some of my old sources on Ellis Island. Back in the day I covered some stories on the White Slavery scare that turned out to be more urban legend than fact, but if I recall there were a few ‘unaccounted for’ immigrants that did slip through and end up in less than salubrious circumstances.”

  Poppy made a mental note to find out more about the White Slavery story.

  “But as you say, Miz Denby, that will all have to wait until Monday when office hours resume. What we can do now is go look at a body in a mortuary.”

  Poppy blinked in shock. “I beg your pardon!”

  Rollo laughed. “Oh, your face is a peach, Miz Denby, an absolute peach. I�
�ve managed to – how do I put this? – influence someone down at the city morgue, to let us have a look at old Prince von Hassler. And…” he paused dramatically “… I’ve also managed to get the key to his apartment.”

  Poppy blinked in double time. “How did you –”

  Rollo raised his hands again. “Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies.” Then he grinned. “But best of all, today we’ll be travelling in a cab, m’lady.”

  “I thought you couldn’t afford it,” said Poppy.

  “I can’t,” said Rollo, looking like the Cheshire Cat, “but The New York Times can. And I’ll be slapping them with the bill as soon as this becomes front page news.”

  CHAPTER 24

  SATURDAY, 20 APRIL 1921, MIDTOWN EAST MANHATTAN

  It was the second time in two days that Poppy was visiting Bellevue Hospital. But this time it was not to see Toby at the orthopaedic department, but the official mortuary of the Chief Medical Officer housed at the facility. Rollo, through his sources, had arranged an unofficial viewing of the body of the octogenarian prince, courtesy of an underpaid and financially compliant mortuary assistant.

  Behind a pair of half-moon spectacles, the mortician raised an eyebrow at Poppy’s presence. He did not, however, query it. Poppy, sadly, was not unfamiliar with dead bodies. At the military hospital she had become all too familiar with the dead and dying. One of her jobs had been to wash the corpses to prepare them for viewing. It was a sad, lonely task, but one she performed with as much dignity as she could muster. It was the least she could do for the brave young men who had given their lives fighting for what they believed in; and the thing she wished she could have done for her brother, Christopher.

  But the body lying on the marble slab was nothing like the broken young men, many of them with limbs amputated, that she had ministered to back in 1917. This one was large, flabby, and old. Folds of flesh sagged like a serving of tripe, and the extremities were blackened with lividity. Thanks to refrigeration, putrification had not yet set in, but a greeny-grey pallor was beginning to creep up the neck. The face, drained of blood, looked little like the photographs Poppy had seen of the prince in life, although the thick grey moustache remained full and proud.

  Rollo pointed to a two-inch gash on the prince’s forehead. “Was that the cause of death?”

  The mortuary assistant hooked his thumbs into his braces under his unbuttoned lab coat. “Yes and no. Yes, in that that was the fatal blow that caused the haemorrhage, but no in that he would not have hit his head like that unless he had fallen.”

  Well, that’s stating the obvious, thought Poppy. She wanted to ask something herself but Rollo had suggested she leave all the questioning to him. He was the one calling in the favour, he was the one with the New York Times credentials and, if their presence there was questioned, he would be the one to take the rap. “And,” he added, grinning, “some fellas don’t like being questioned by a dame.”

  Poppy scowled but agreed to his request.

  “So…” probed Rollo. “Why did he fall?”

  The mortician ran his finger down and across the prince’s chest following the line of a recently sutured incision from navel to clavicle. “We thought it might have been his ticker. He was on medication. But while it’s not in great shape, the heart was still in working order.”

  “So…” probed Rollo again.

  “So…” said the mortician, rocking back on his heels.

  Get on with it!

  The mortician took the prince’s head in both hands and rotated it so the back of his head was visible. A square of hair had been shaved to reveal a purply blue swelling. “This,” said the mortician, “is what caused him to fall. A powerful blow from behind with a blunt instrument. It could not have been self-inflicted.”

  “How do you know that?” asked Rollo. “Couldn’t he have slipped on the tiles – this was in a bathroom, wasn’t it?”

  The mortician nodded.

  “And then he could have hit the back of his head, then fallen forward.”

  The mortician shook his head. “No. That’s not what happened. If he had fallen with sufficient force to create a contusion with this severity of swelling then he would have continued to fall backwards. If he could have stopped his fall after he hit his head he would not have been falling fast enough to generate this degree of force.”

  He peered over his half-moon spectacles at Rollo with an expression that almost said “Elementary, dear Watson”. Poppy chuckled.

  Rollo cleared his throat. “So, you’re saying he was murdered.”

  The mortician shook his head vigorously. “That’s not my call, Rolandson. All I’m saying is that someone hit this man on the back of the head, causing him to fall and then hit his forehead, which caused his skull to fracture, which then led to a haemorrhage with fatal consequences. Whether the initial blow was accidental or intentional, and what the motive was, is beyond the scope of the medical examiner’s office. And, if I may say so, that of The New York Times… if you are even working for them. I’d heard you were canned, Rolandson, then you went to England. Remind me again why you are here?”

  Rollo looked at Poppy. “Are you taking notes, Miz Denby?”

  She wasn’t. Although she had her notepad open and pencil poised there was nothing the man had said that she couldn’t remember. However, she recalled what Rollo had once told her during a mentoring session. “Always take notes, Miz Denby. It makes the interviewee think they’ve said something important.”

  “Of course, Mr Rolandson,” she said. “This is crucial information and I doubt we’d be able to recall it as well as doctor… doctor…” The mortician straightened up and pulled back his shoulders. He was not a doctor. Only a technician. Rollo had already told her that. Nonetheless he primped with pride. “Best you leave my name out of it, Miz; we doctors don’t like to boast, you know.”

  “Of course not,” said Poppy, making a note. “Sorry, doctor. Could you please spell contusion? These medical words are so far beyond me…”

  Poppy and Rollo stepped out of the elevator onto the top-most floor of one of the most exclusive addresses on Lexington Avenue. This was the home of Prince Hans von Hassler. Yellow police tape zig-zagged across the doorway warning them to keep out. Rollo looked to left and right in the small vestibule and then inserted a key into the lock. The door opened.

  “After you, Miz Denby,” he said and indicated with a wave of his hand that she was to crawl under the tape.

  “Are you sure this is allowed?” asked Poppy.

  Rollo shrugged. “Depends who you ask.” Poppy didn’t move. “Come on, Poppy, shake a leg. All right, all right. If it makes any difference to you we are not breaking and entering. And I didn’t steal the key; it was loaned to me by someone close to the victim. Practically a family member.”

  Poppy cocked her head to one side. “Practically?”

  Rollo grinned. “Practically.”

  Poppy sighed, shook her head, and got down on her knees, crawling under the bottom line of tape and dragging her satchel after her. Rollo followed.

  Inside the apartment Poppy gasped. It was nothing like she’d imagined an old man’s home to be: fuddy duddy and filled with bric-à-brac. The décor was like something out of a Hollywood celebrity magazine. The centrepiece was a recessed oval marble floor surrounded by polished black teak steps. A Steinway grand piano filled one corner, while floor to ceiling glass doors opened onto a topiarian roof garden.

  Rollo let out a long whistle then summed up his opinion in one word: “Swell.”

  Along the wall behind the piano were photographs of the prince with various Hollywood celebrities, including Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks Jnr. There were also photographs of him with leading politicians, including the late Teddy Roosevelt, the new President Warren Harding in his younger days, and Senator Theodore Spencer.

  “Nothing that appears to have been snapped in the last three years,” Rollo noted. “Didn’t you say Toby had told you he’d beco
me a bit of a recluse?”

  “Yes,” said Poppy. “I wonder why.”

  Rollo shrugged. “Old age?”

  “Perhaps,” agreed Poppy. “But this apartment doesn’t look like it belongs to someone who has given in to his dotage. It looks almost like a bachelor pad.”

  Rollo grinned. “And how many of those have you seen, Miz Denby?”

  Poppy flushed. “You know what I mean.”

  “Yes,” agreed Rollo, “I do.” He took one more look around the plush living room then said: “Should we check out the scene of the crime?”

  “You mean the bathroom?”

  “I do indeed. Over there, I think.”

  Someone had very helpfully left a white-tape outline of where the body had lain: between the lavatory and the recessed round bathtub with gold taps. Poppy paused to imagine the cadaver she had seen in the mortuary splayed on the tiled floor, its head face down where now there was only a sticky dark red stain. The poor old man, she thought. Did he die instantly? Or did he lie there for a while, lonely and afraid, as his life seeped away?

  “Wish I could have brought a camera,” Rollo grumbled. “It was one of the conditions of entry. No photographs. If the Times goes with the story they’ll have to get a pic from the official police photographer.”

  “If?” said Poppy.

  Rollo grinned. “Sorry, Miz Denby – when.”

  Poppy looked around the bathroom – at the plush towels, the modern shower cubicle with the Bakelite seat. Her aunt had one in her shower in London. Poppy had never used a shower before moving in with her aunt. Only the most well-to-do people could afford them. And Prince von Hassler was certainly that. He was also, by the look of the shower seat, either disabled or frail with age.