by Marlowe Benn
“When did you meet Naomi?”
“In Washington, the second time. I was poor as a church mouse, beholden to the charity of others. Those who had a bit didn’t mind sharing with those who had nothing. Every one of us valued our sisters’ stiff backs and aching feet as much as our own. It was sheer good fortune. Mine, anyway. Naomi and I were assigned to the same city block, so we marched together, back and forth with our banners and our signs, for nine days in the rain. There were others too, but pretty soon we got talking. I could listen to her forever. She knew women I’d only heard of—Alice Paul, Lucy Burns, Gertrude Pinchot. Naomi listened to me too, to what I felt and thought.
“That’s when I understood Naomi was different. Other rich women fight with us, and they help in huge ways, but poor women know best what we’re up against and why more than the vote has to change in this country if women will ever be as free as men. Rich women can join the marches and protests, but in the end they go home to hot meals and servants. Like I said, Naomi was different. She understood hardship because she suffered too. She said it was nothing to sacrifice a few privileges of fine living when others were sacrificing so much more. She said until we could all have proper meals and good doctors and opportunities to pursue our talents, she wouldn’t enjoy those luxuries herself.
“Well, before that marching was over, I knew I wanted to work with her, for her. We both stayed on in Washington through that summer, and whenever she needed anything—a letter posted, a seam mended, her hair pinned—I’d take care of it if I could. I followed her to New York and helped set up the Union. I’ve always done whatever she needed me to do.”
Alice leaned into the table, pushing her words toward Julia with a strain in her raw, lined face. “I loved her, Miss Kydd, like a twin of my very soul.”
Nothing could have been more clear. “Her death must be terribly hard for you. I’m so very sorry.”
“You can’t possibly know.” Her chin dropped, and Julia saw a thinning spot at the top of her head, where gray hairs outnumbered brown ones. When Alice looked up, she released a great breath. “Naomi had been troubled for weeks before she died. Not so much ill, not that I could see, but unhappy, worried. For the first time she raised her voice to me, sharp and hurtful. Something was wrong, but it was an awful secret even from me. All I could think of was those hateful threats. She kept insisting it was a private matter, that she could deal with it herself, and that I shouldn’t worry. Well. It was agony to watch her suffer. Something was gnawing at her from the inside, like a vicious worm, and all I could do was save those notes and pray I never had to show them to anyone, because that would mean they’d finally driven her to desperation. And then that’s what happened, my worst fear come true.”
A loud thump sounded from Naomi’s bedroom, then a muffled blasphemy. When nothing more followed, Alice went on. “Something made life unbearable for Naomi. She’d take her own life only if it was the last bit of freedom left, her last chance to strike back at what tormented her. I always thought it was mental torment, but I can’t stop thinking about your notion that maybe someone used physical pain to drive her over the edge. If I knew what or who was behind it, I’d stop at nothing—nothing—to see him shamed for it. Only God can punish him now, but I swear I’d do everything in my power to make sure he has not one more minute’s peace on this earth.”
Julia’s jaw ached. She willed her teeth to unclench. The tale was largely as she’d conjectured, but now her blood and muscles hummed with the horror that logical guesswork neatly elided. Outrage, frustration, pity, grief—it was impossible not to feel some inkling of Alice’s anguish. After several moments she said, “You say him, Alice. Do you know something more? Or have suspicions?”
A vein throbbed in Alice’s forearm. She brushed down her sleeve to cover it and fastened the buttoned cuff. Her hand shook. No doubt she’d shared more than she’d intended. “Him, her. It, they. I wish I did know, but I don’t. I have my suspicions, of course, but they’re ugly to say without any proof, and I won’t. It would be un-Christian and unwomanly.”
“You suspect Chester Rankin, don’t you?”
“So does his own sister,” Alice snapped. She bit down on her lip and swung her head toward the kitchen. “Here I’ve talked your ear off and kept you from your work. I’m late too. They’re expecting me at the Union.” She stood, bustling together the tea things. She paused before adding in a low voice, “But I’m grateful you heard me out, Miss Kydd. I wish you could have known Naomi. You’d have liked her. She was very different from her sister.”
Alice glanced at Naomi’s bedroom, where Glennis was thumping about, frowning at the inadvertent insult. Then she shook her head and carried the dishes to the sink. After dropping two pears into a string bag and calling a hurried goodbye to Glennis, Alice left the apartment.
Watching her boots clatter up the brick steps, Julia thought hard. She rose and moved quietly to listen at the door, where Glennis had gone silent. Before her resolve could falter—it had to be done, like it or not—Julia stepped across the narrow hall and slipped into Alice’s bedroom.
The room was even tinier than Naomi’s, scarcely more than a cupboard. A pallet on the floor sufficed for a bed, filling the room from end to end. In the corner three fruit crates were stacked, as in Naomi’s room, as shelving. They held a few books, a hairbrush and three bone combs, a chipped saucer with a pair of plain earrings, and neatly folded underclothes. The bottom crate was filled with a mound topped by a folded cotton bedsheet. Julia’s heart sank. She listened for a sound, half hoping to be driven from the room in a guilty panic.
But there was none. She knelt, careful to disturb nothing but the folded linen pushed into the crate’s cavity. She laid it aside and uncovered a small typewriting machine.
CHAPTER 18
Julia carried the machine to the dining table, inserted a sheet of paper from the sideboard drawer, and advanced it over the narrow roller. Wincing at each snap of a key in the quiet apartment, she punched out the words and laid the sheet beside the note delivered to Philip’s apartment last evening. The two typed texts matched exactly, calibrated to identical letterspacing. They matched in color too, each produced with a fresh black ribbon, and each featuring a clouded counter of the lowercase o, filled with ink residue, and a y with a scratched left stem. There was no doubt the threat she’d received had been typed on this machine. She’d noticed both damaged characters on the notes Alice had shown them at the Union; this machine produced them as well.
Julia stuffed the sheets into her handbag and returned the machine to its hiding place. Declaring her sorting task finished—other than the tarnished candlesticks, there was nothing the Rankins might want to keep or sell—she sat in the old rocker to think. A faded quilt draped over the chair’s back and folded into a seat cushion made it surprisingly comfortable.
Why would Alice send anonymous notes to threaten her dearest friend? Her devotion seemed genuine and unshakable. Perhaps she’d hoped to frighten Naomi into caution. Perhaps she’d perceived an enemy and hoped the notes would suggest treachery to Naomi too. But why resort to subterfuge? Why not simply confide her suspicions?
Julia remembered something curious about the notes Alice had shown them: none were dated and, without envelopes, none were postmarked. They could have been produced years ago or recently—even after Naomi’s death. That raised a new question: Why on earth would Alice fabricate a story of menace looming over Naomi?
And why would she now warn off Glennis and Julia? That was most puzzling of all. Alice had gone out of her way to raise alarms in Glennis’s mind, to provoke questions about Chester’s account of an accidental overdose. At every chance Alice had encouraged Glennis’s suspicions; why would she now want to frighten her? To deepen those suspicions? All Julia knew for certain was that the machine that had produced the threatening notes was hidden in Alice’s room. She assumed that meant Alice had written and sent the notes. Was she meant to think so?
Maybe Alice wasn’t
aware the machine was there. Everyone knew Chester had insisted she stay away from the apartment for several nights after Naomi’s death. While Alice was away, he or someone else could have typed the latest notes and then hidden the machine among her things. To scare her? To incriminate her when it was found? Regardless, it must be someone with access to the apartment. Someone who could enter from the home above? Nolda Rankin had just demonstrated how easily it could be done.
Naomi’s bedroom door opened. Julia quickly added her discovery to the list of things not to tell Glennis, not yet. She needed more time to ponder its implications, to see how it fit among the other unexplained oddments she’d noticed. If it fit.
Glennis flopped onto the sofa, dropping an old cigar box onto the squashed, afghan-covered cushion beside her. “Has she gone?” She raked her fingers into her hair. “Just as well. It’s too much, Julia. I can’t bear what I’m finding. Nothing makes any sense. Look.”
Glennis handed her the box. Inside was a jumbled heap of folded papers. They seemed to be receipts bearing various letterheads, some ornate and effusive, others terse. Each listed one item cryptically described: 1 brlt gold & dmd; 1 ldys ring, sphr; 3 ivry combs w. prls; 3 dlx bks ½ moroc; and so on, followed by a sum marked paid to N. Rankin. Paid to, not paid by.
“Naomi sold these things?” Julia lifted her voice into a question, but they both knew the answer. These were receipts for things Naomi had sold or pawned, probably when her reduced funds from Chester no longer covered expenses at the Union. They tracked her descent from affluence to poverty.
“I recognize most of it,” Glennis said, voice sullen. “A lot was my mother’s. Naomi was the oldest daughter, so she got the best jewelry and silver. I remember that sapphire ring. I thought it was the most beautiful thing in the world.”
Julia thought of her own few treasures linking her to her mother.
“That’s not the worst part. Some of this stuff disappeared last year. Chester made a big stink when his special edition of Lincoln’s speeches went missing, all three volumes. He tried to whip a confession out of his boys. He was sure they took it, since they love that old war stuff.”
Glennis dug through the pile in Julia’s lap and pulled out 1 brclt, gold & gems, $75. “This has to be Nolda’s gold bracelet. Last winter she fussed us all to pieces when she couldn’t find it. She dismissed one of the maids, sore as blazes when the girl refused to confess and return it.”
Glennis pushed the receipts back into the flimsy box. “All that trouble and it turns out Naomi stole it. Well, we can’t let Chester and Nolda know.” She pushed the box at Julia. “Take it. Burn it or throw it in the rubbish, anything. Just get it out of this house.”
It was hard knowledge for Glennis to accept, understandably so. These slips made Naomi real in a painfully new way. They were sad, mundane evidence that Naomi was neither a saint nor a harridan, as her public life led others to declare, but simply a woman driven to deceit and thievery by the all-too-ordinary realities of need.
To change the subject Julia said, “I found a pair of silver candlesticks that may have some value. Everything else should probably go to charity. Or to Alice, who seems to have very little of her own. I can’t imagine how she’s going to live.” This was another dispiriting thought. She quickly asked, “Did you find anything to save?”
Glennis fell back hard against the sofa cushions, raising a puff of dust. “Save? You could say that. Come on. I’ll show you.”
The tiny bedroom was in chaos, with clothing strewed across the bed. Each bureau drawer was open, contents spilling out. Boxes lay on the floor in disarray. “Sorry for the dog’s breakfast,” Glennis said. “She had a few decent blouses and a good leather belt. But this is what gives me the flipping glooms.”
She unfolded a cotton handkerchief. Inside lay a small apple-green bottle of Lalique glass pressed with an ornate vine pattern: Le Jade, the new Roger et Gallet perfume. “Lyle Curley gave this to me last year when we got engaged. I was sick when I couldn’t find it. I didn’t tell anyone because Nolda would go poisonous about the help again, but I was sure one of the day girls took it. That’s when I had a better lock put on my door. And here it was Naomi all the time. As bad as a common thief. It’s too horrible.”
“Maybe Chester allowed her less money than you thought. She didn’t exactly live high off the hog here.”
Glennis kneaded her lips between her teeth, an unattractive habit. “I can see taking things from upstairs to sell, maybe. Chester’s such a skinflint, and Lord knows he’s crawling with it. Serves him right for being so tight. But my perfume? I thought she liked me. We were friendly, sort of, when we saw each other.” Her voice hardened again. “But she took my perfume, just to have, not even to sell. I had to buy another bottle so Lyle wouldn’t find out I’d lost it, and it cost me a fortune.”
Julia doubted the expense had put more than a small dent in Glennis’s budget. She probably spent more on manicures in a month. Julia took the elegant little vial and held it up. About a quarter of the precious liquid was gone. “I suppose Naomi liked nice perfume too, now and then.”
Glennis’s face fell like a soufflé just from the oven, from resentment to remorse. She had the most unguarded face of anyone Julia knew. “And here I am fussing at her. I’d have given it to her or bought her a bottle if I’d known. I would have, Julia. She should have told me she wanted it.”
In a burst of generosity, Glennis took the bottle and pulled out the tiny glass stopper. She drew it behind each of Julia’s ears, then remoistened and rolled it in the hollow of her own throat. A French parfumerie blossomed in the close room. “She must have felt like a boiled rag down here, knowing about all the nice things upstairs just sitting there, completely ignored. Chester’s so stingy I don’t blame her a bit for helping herself to a few of them. It still feels sneaky. I don’t like that part, but who can blame her?”
Glennis rewrapped the little bottle and set it on top of the bureau. She sat down beside a loose pile of blouses. “A few of these might fit me. I’d like to have something of hers. Vivian might fit into the smaller ones, after the baby comes.” She shuffled an inventory of the mostly white cotton blouses. “I didn’t think to bring down a basket.”
Julia pulled back the wool blanket and reached for the flat pillow. “I read this once in a novel. You can use a pillow slip to carry things. It’s a zippy trick.” Of course, in the novel it had been a trick used by zippy thieves. “You can—” She fell silent. The case was made of exquisite white silk, monogrammed with an ornate R in brilliant blue thread.
Wounded shock returned to Glennis’s voice. “Nolda wondered where that went.”
Julia shook the thin pillow out onto the bed. A few feathers drifted onto the piled clothing, but both women stared at a second surprise hidden in the shallow dent beneath where the pillow had been. Julia lifted and unfurled an ecru silk sleeping gown, its bodice of Calais lace still curved eerily in the shape of its owner’s breasts. A glance at the side seam confirmed it came from Cadolle in Paris. With almost palpable clarity Julia understood the desire to slide into such pleasure at the end of a difficult day.
Glennis exhaled a soft sound, something between a whistle and a word. Again Naomi Rankin had eluded Julia. Here lurked yet another facet of the woman, one who even in desperation must have savored intense sensuous luxuries. Did Alice know this side to her friend? She must. What Julia knew of Alice slid further into the same shadowy thicket.
“Look,” Glennis said, fingering the almost weightless garment. They saw careful stitches where it had been mended, where the lace had been reattached at the shoulder, and a ghostly stain at the hem. “It’s old, but isn’t it stunning?” She lifted it to her cheek. “I want to keep this. I’ll never fit into it, but look how it’s almost like she’s still inside. It must have made her feel beautiful.”
Indeed.
“Archie would faint dead away if I sashayed out in something like this,” Glennis said, palm sliding across its shimmer. “H
e won’t even let me leave the lights on. It might do him good, stir him up a little.” She sighed. “I suppose your David wouldn’t bat an eye. You’d look divine in a slinker like this.”
Your David pinched Julia’s breath. Such proprietary drivel was as naive as it was smug, but a prospective marriage would render the expression unwittingly ironic. To avoid Glennis’s avid eyes, shining with curiosity, Julia folded and slid the blouses into the pillow slip. “Did you find a diary?” she asked, crouching beside the stacked fruit crates where Naomi kept her few books. She scanned the miscellany but saw only worn copies of common editions and thin volumes of polemical tracts.
“Just what’s there. Nothing to write in. If she kept a diary, it’s somewhere else.” Glennis wrapped her hands inside Naomi’s lingerie like a muff.
Julia sank to her knees beside the jumbled books. They might have no particular worth, but they were still books. She pulled them out onto the floor and replaced them upright in crude order of subject matter. In the bottom crate a fat, gilt-stamped clothbound Bible lay on its back. Ten thousand like it languished in secondhand bookstalls, the ubiquitous stuff of late Victorian Christianity.
“We all got one of those for First Communion,” Glennis said, “from our uncle George. Mine has gruesome pictures. I used to like them but wouldn’t care much for them now.”
Julia lifted the large quarto, weighing its bulk. “Did you look inside?”
Glennis stared at her. Julia opened the front cover. Its several hundred pages had been glued together and hollowed out, leaving a cavity. Old Bibles were common candidates for homemade hiding places. It was another of the useful insights readers gained into the criminal, or at least the devious, mind.
Inside the Bible lay a thick paperbound booklet filled with the same handwriting they’d seen on Naomi’s suicide note. Glennis made another inarticulate sound and reached for it. “Crikey.” She rifled the densely covered pages between her thumbs. “I must have pudding for brains. I’d never’ve found this in a hundred years.”