by Marlowe Benn
He repeated the name three times, squinting in concentration. “I think so.”
Julia slid the file back into place and closed the drawer. “Can you remember who it was, who paid for Miss Pankhurst’s appointment? This is tricky, Barney. I’m not asking about Miss Pankhurst herself but about the person who paid the money. Do you remember?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“The person who paid? Are you sure you’re remembering the right person?”
His gaze slinked to hers. “I remember. She had brand-new money. It made a pop when she counted it.”
“She, Barney? It was a woman?”
“Yeah.”
A woman. Julia considered the possibilities. Alice? Nolda Rankin? Vivian Winterjay? Someone from the Union? One of the Rankin maids? A secretary from Chester’s bank? That would certainly fit with the crisp new bills. Of course Russell, or any other man, could have sent a female emissary for the task. It was hopeless. Nothing here would help identify the baby’s father. It had been a long shot, and it had proved futile. Julia bit her lip in frustration.
Barney smoothed the damp bill in his palm. He eyed the door nervously.
She slipped the second bill into his jacket pocket. “I’m grateful for your help, Barney. Be sure to keep this for yourself now. Buy something special with it. We can go now, before she wonders where you are.”
His eyes followed the money all the way to his pocket. “Don’t you want to know her name?”
Julia subdued a flash of irritation. “I’m afraid Miss Pankhurst isn’t her real name.”
His face fell in confusion. “Not her. The other one.”
“You know the name of the lady who paid?”
He nodded, a grin splitting his face.
“How do you know it?”
“I can read, can’t I?”
Patience, patience, Julia reminded herself. “But, Barney, the names in the files aren’t real names. And they’re only for the patients.”
“Not in the files,” he thundered. “In the newspapers.”
“You saw her name in the newspaper?”
He gave an exultant nod. “Pictures too. I seen her in my papers.”
It was Julia’s turn to stare.
“It was that Miss Rankin lady,” he shouted, eager to please. “I remember ’cause she smelled real pukey.”
“The lady who paid?”
“Yeah. Yeah! Her. That lady who made all the fuss about voting.”
CHAPTER 24
Julia tapped on the taxicab’s backseat window. Glennis squawked and unlocked the door, jolting the driver awake. Julia reported her disappointing discovery as they sped south.
“All that worry for a lousy fizz?” Glennis complained.
Exactly. Two precious days and twenty dollars Julia could ill afford to lose, merely to learn that Naomi herself arranged and paid for the fatal procedure. Alice did not know her friend as well as she thought. Apparently Russell’s fears were closer to the mark: Naomi’s defiant poverty was her undoing. By the time they crossed Fifty-Ninth Street, Glennis had cheered a bit, speculating that Chester had forced Naomi up those stairs. Regardless, they were no closer to knowing the baby’s father or why Naomi had veered so dramatically onto the tragic course that cost her her life. Julia craved a sidecar. A shadowy plan was beginning to form, and she needed all the strengthening she could get.
Shortly after eight the next evening, Julia watched the housemaid close the doors to the Rankin living room. The commotion inside suggested the Rankins, the Winterjays, and Russell were not amused at having been summoned again at short notice. Glennis’s voice pierced the querulous noise. Her words were muffled by the thick oak doors, but the tone was clear: nervous, a bit too jolly. Something about very important travel arrangements for her wedding next April in Kent. The family’s mood did not improve. Best to move quickly.
Julia and Alice were secreted in the butler’s pantry. Alice fingered a white chiffon scarf wrapped loosely around her throat. She wore a dark felt cloche pulled low over her ears. Her eyes floated in the pallor of her gaunt face. “Ready?” Julia said. “Take a deep breath, and remember what you’re going to say.”
Alice took a few shallow breaths. “I know what I have to do.”
Julia checked the hallway, saw it was deserted, and led Alice to the living room doors. They exchanged pinches for courage, and Julia pushed open both doors.
They were expecting stunned silence. But Nolda Rankin’s immediate and guttural profanity surprised everyone. Her husband turned at it, astonished.
“Miss Clintock has something important to say,” Julia announced.
Chester bounded from his seat toward Alice. “Get out of my house! There’s nothing you can—”
She stood her ground and jerked away the scarf.
Julia blushed at this melodramatic touch, as it had been her idea, but it froze Chester. There was a tide of low exclamations. Vivian Winterjay stammered the obvious question.
“Someone attacked me,” Alice said in a hoarse voice. “Tuesday night, after I left this room.”
“Are you all right?” said Vivian, one hand comforting her own throat.
Alice laid a palm across the vivid marks. “Naomi was my dearest friend. For her sake I agreed to your demands for privacy. But now I’m frightened and exhausted.” She labored to swallow, and Julia steadied her elbow. “I need to rest tonight; then I’ll leave your house forever, Mr. Rankin. And tomorrow morning I’m going straight to the police with everything I know about Naomi’s death. I see now it’s the right thing to do.”
“What do you mean?” Voices rose. “The police?”
“This is getting grim,” muttered Russell.
Alice retucked the scarf around her throat and, ignoring the tumult, left the room. Julia turned to follow her out.
“Wait! Don’t leave, Julia,” begged Glennis, as usual a notch too loud, as she scrambled to grab her arm. “I need you here.”
This time Julia would not be deterred. “I have to go, Glennis. The taxi’s waiting. This is a family matter, and I don’t belong here.”
The last thing she heard as the door swung shut on the family’s rising alarm was Glennis’s wail as she plopped into the nearest chair. “Will somebody please tell me what’s going on?”
An hour later, the basement apartment was dark. Two bundles tied with string sat on the dining table, the last of Alice’s things to be vacated in the morning. Only an occasional creak from the room above suggested the Rankins were still afoot, perhaps discussing plans for Glennis’s wedding with redoubled urgency.
Glennis was crouched around the corner in the kitchen nook. Alice had safely barricaded herself in Naomi’s bedroom. Julia waited in position, feigning sleep in the old rocker. Alice’s long white scarf was now looped around her neck and trailed over the rocker’s arm, the dark cloche slumped forward to hide Julia’s face. On the low table near her feet sat a great china vase from Nolda’s morning room. Should something happen, as they dearly hoped it would, Julia planned to kick out and knock it to the floor. The crash was the signal for Glennis to come running, making the loudest ruckus she could.
A click. The slightest of sounds. A current of musty air crept along the worn linoleum floor like a marsh tide. Julia’s every nerve crackled. She clamped her lips together to stay quiet.
Fingers slid into the scarf’s chiffon. Her stomach plunged. The fingers coiled, weightless, little more than a whiff of lavender talc, and she remembered, too late, to fill her lungs. With a fierce indrawn breath above her, the scarf tensed into a cord that bit across her throat. Her arms jumped as if yanked by a puppeteer, grasping helplessly at what loomed behind her. She kicked out at the table. The scarf went slack.
The vase hit the floor with a dull thud and rolled quietly under Julia’s scuffling feet.
A second yank drove wet hisses from her throat. Pain flooded her skull. Colors swirled. She saw the tip of her mother’s cigar glowing red. Christophine reaching through a gauzy cur
tain, weeping and hiccupping in her musical patois. Gerald’s pink body: naked, shivering, unquiet. The flare of a hundred cigars, a furnace hot and loud.
Julia resented the lurch of distant muscles. The mind collapsed meekly into its fine understanding of death, but the body fought like the surly animal it was. Her knees rose up and drove both heels toward the floor. It was her last strength, and not entirely hers, gathered into one clumsy stomp, one chance of hitting the vase. Through the fiery roar in her head came a distant clatter.
“Stop!”
Or maybe some other word. But Glennis’s voice, shrill as sirens. Yellow light blazed, and she appeared like a mad wraith, waving Chester’s revolver in reckless loops. She uncorked a scream that would earn Madame Sosostris a handsome bonus. The scarf finally sagged.
Julia choked. With each heave of returning oxygen, vision crept out from under its red ooze, and thoughts revived into words. Her heartbeat receded back into her chest.
Glennis clawed at the scarf. “Get it off!”
Julia’s hands rose to the base of her skull, rested limp for a moment, and removed the stiff collar hidden beneath the scarf. Stolen from Chester’s wardrobe and reinforced with brass stays to appease worrywart Glennis, it had made all the difference, given Julia the extra moments to save herself. Relief washed over her throat, slick with perspiration and throbbing of nascent bruises. Colors would soon line her neck like some exotic duck’s.
Glennis leaned close to peer at Julia. The gun still careened at the end of her right arm, in drunken surveillance of what remained motionless behind the rocker. Grateful tears swelled in Julia’s eyes, and Glennis nodded solemnly to see them.
“Lord God Almighty!”
It was all Julia could distinguish in the torrent of voices thundering down the cellar stairs and past the wine reserves and the laundry basins and drying linens. It was a man’s voice, but beyond that she couldn’t discern.
“That’s it. This has gone far enough.” Russell’s voice boomed.
Julia steadied the floor beneath her feet and stood, both hands gripping the rocker, to face him.
He was not looking at her. No one was. No one paled at her injured throat. No one exclaimed at the blood dripping down her calf, sliced by a shard of pottery. They saw only Vivian Winterjay, gloved hands still sculpted into loose fists. Her fingers, moments earlier coursing with chiffon, gripped nothing.
“Darling?”
Vivian’s blue eyes sparked at her husband’s entreaty.
“What’s going on here?” Russell demanded.
Glennis discovered the revolver in her hand and set it on the table. She ran to the kitchen for a glass of water. Julia clutched it with stiff fingers, the dented and twisted collar still dangling from her wrist. Each glide of cool water helped ease the fire in her throat.
“Wait.” Nolda disappeared back into the dark cellar beyond the apartment door. Her steps pounded up the wooden staircase to the kitchen. The door at the top slammed shut, no doubt dispersing the servants huddled there. On returning she shoved home the bolt, locking the apartment door. “Keep your voices down. Those people have ears like rabbits.”
Chester glowered at Julia. “Well?”
“I can explain everything.” Julia’s voice was a painful wisp. She lifted the mangled collar. “And I will. To the police.”
Nolda made a choking noise and stumbled in a half circle before running for the commode and basin. A full blast of tap water couldn’t disguise her retching. Chester flapped open a handkerchief and scrubbed it across his forehead and upper lip. “Can’t you do something, Coates?”
Russell eyed Julia and did not answer.
“The police,” Julia repeated between sips. “Unless you agree to honor Naomi’s new will.”
“That’s blackmail.” Chester’s handkerchief dangled from his mouth like a costume beard. “Despicable. You’ll bleed us dry. Hold us hostage. I won’t do it. Something’s wrong here. You tricked Vivian. I say go ahead, Miss Kydd. See what the police make of your vicious little games.”
“It looks incriminating, Chester,” Russell said. “I must counsel you to consider her terms. The story here could be worse than you imagine.”
Nolda’s sickness turned to waves of slurred weeping.
“The story is what you see, Mr. Rankin,” Julia said. “Your sister attacked Miss Clintock Tuesday evening, and she tried again just now.”
“Don’t be absurd. Why on earth would she do that? You won’t get away with this, whatever your scheme.”
Winterjay held his wife’s face tight against his breast pocket. “For pity’s sake, Chester, think of Vivian. Think of Nolda. Think of the children. Nothing else matters. Let Miss Clintock have the money, if it means an end to this nightmare. Nothing is worth any more of our suffering.”
From the cave of his chest came Vivian’s first sound, a muffled wail.
“You swear you won’t take any of this to the police or the newspapers?” Chester said.
“If you swear to honor Naomi’s will, relinquish control over her money, then yes.” Julia took another calming swallow. “And if you also listen to what I have to say.”
His muttered profanity was assent enough. Winterjay rested his cheek against his wife’s hair, stroking her back in restless gratitude.
“Mr. Coates as witness,” Julia said.
“Fair enough,” Russell said. “We need to get to the bottom of this. You owe us a great deal of explanation, Miss Kydd.” He retreated toward the back wall, well away from the others. He hadn’t yet met her gaze.
Julia accepted this with a nod. She noticed a stinging pain on her leg and saw a sticky mess of blood in her shoe. Glennis saw it too and fetched a cloth to wipe the wound clean. As its ooze slowed to a trickle, Julia’s breathing settled, and she gathered her thoughts.
Nolda reappeared, silent and gray. Chester handed her his wadded handkerchief.
“When Alice—Miss Clintock—was attacked,” Julia said, “I knew Glennis was right. She sensed from the start that Naomi’s death was not what it seemed.”
“You all thought I was potty,” said Glennis, “but I knew she didn’t accidentally take all those tablets. The idea was ridiculous.”
“Whoever attacked Alice had something terrible to hide,” Julia said. “The only way to learn what was to lure the assailant to come again. Alice’s threat of going to the police provoked just that. But this time she—I—was ready.”
“I knew it,” Chester said. “A trick. Do you hear this, Coates? The girl’s a lunatic.”
“So I put on this collar under Alice’s scarf and hat and waited, pretending to be asleep, as Alice was the other evening.” The mangled collar testified to the consequences.
“Expecting me, I’m sure. As Glennis so brilliantly decided from the get-go.”
“Not you, Mr. Rankin. By all accounts you quarreled constantly with Naomi and probably welcomed her death. But a stronger motive drove our attacker. Mrs. Winterjay was desperate to hide the truth about Naomi’s death.”
Vivian pulled away from her husband in a sharp breath. “Are you happy now, Miss Kydd? My life’s a misery, and we’re all in tatters. Just as Naomi wanted. She couldn’t have done it, not without your help. You and Glennis and her.” She jabbed a finger toward Alice. “You got her money. Wasn’t that enough? Must you destroy her family too?”
Alice touched her injured throat.
Glennis barked out a high laugh. “You blubber about Naomi and Alice, Viv, but what about you? You tried to kill my friends.”
“Your friends? Glennis! Open your silly eyes. If I’d let this Clintock woman go to the police and the newspapers, where do you think that would leave you and your precious Archie? He’d run the other way before you could blink. No man would want anything to do with this family. I couldn’t let her destroy us. She forced me to act. Of course I hated it. But it was only a scare. She can moan till kingdom come, but that’s all it was. Any doctor would say so.”
“What about Juli
a? She’d be dead if it weren’t for that collar.”
Vivian dismissed this with a wave of her jaw. “You girls are fools, meddling in matters you cannot comprehend. I have no quarrel with Miss Kydd. It’s her own fault if her stupid trick cost her a few bruises. Don’t look so shocked and innocent. You knew exactly what would happen. How can you point a gun at my head, with that threat about going to the police, and not expect me to defend myself and my family?”
“Good God, Vivian,” Russell said. “If you’re so afraid of scandal, what did you think your arrest would do?”
“My arrest? Don’t be ridiculous. Look at her. She’s no more hurt than that Clintock woman was. I wasn’t about to kill her, and besides, no one would ever know it was me. It was a mistake not to unlock the outside door the first time. I knew better tonight. With that door ajar, no one would dare accuse one of the family. Think of the people Naomi associated with. It would never have involved us.”
Chester coughed in irritation. “Who cares about what didn’t happen? I want to know why you girls cooked up this sneaky trap in the first place. We’re still waiting for answers, Miss Kydd, and they’d better be good.”
“Tell them,” Glennis said.
“I guessed the truth,” Julia said, “when I remembered there were two Miss Rankins active in the politics of women’s suffrage. Naomi, of course, but also Mrs. Winterjay, before her marriage.”
Except for the pink blaze across her cheeks, Vivian might have been a statue of stone.
“I discovered, you see, that it was Vivian Rankin, as she was well known in the newspapers years ago, who arranged for the abortion that killed Naomi.”
CHAPTER 25
“No!” Vivian’s denial was quick and fierce.
“What?” Chester and Winterjay exclaimed in unison.
“Performed by a butcher,” Julia said. “Naomi lost a great deal of blood, and she likely suffered a deadly infection as well. Toxic reaction, Dr. Perry called it, though he assumed it was caused by an overdose of morphine.”
“That’s absurd,” Chester said. “I found her myself. Not a drop of blood in sight. Perry will confirm it.”