by Liz Freeland
Aunt Irene tottered. Her hand reached to the lace at the top of her neckline. “Ogden? Is he”—she gulped—“dead?”
Muldoon shook his head. “No, ma’am. We’ve arrested him for arson and are also holding him for the murder of Guy Van Hooten.”
He waited for our response. None came. I’d drawn even with my aunt, and now I hooked my arm through hers. We stood holding each other up, both dumbfounded.
He continued. “We suspected him initially, of course, because there was a fire insurance policy. And then the witness of that morning identified Mr. McChesney as the man she’d seen.”
“Is this the new angle you were telling me about last night?” I asked.
Aunt Irene pivoted toward me. “You never said the police suspected Ogden.”
“I didn’t know,” I said. “He told me the police were investigating a new angle. I had no idea they were going to take a flying leap into the absurd.”
“The witness placed McChesney at the scene,” Muldoon said, “moving furtively, dressed in a coat and scarf found at his house.”
My face heated. I had seen that scarf. I’d dismissed it because I just couldn’t imagine Ogden McChesney doing such a thing. I still couldn’t. It was unthinkable. “Your so-called witness is a cranky old lady who believes everyone looks suspicious. And no wonder. Half the men in Manhattan have plaid scarves and brown coats.”
Muldoon held up a hand. “Before you say anything more, I should tell you that Ogden McChesney has confessed.”
The pressure on my arm increased as Aunt Irene swayed toward me. “How could he confess?” Her voice was faint. “Why would he have burned down his own building?”
“The most common motive in the world,” Muldoon said. “Money.”
There had to be some mistake. “He’s covering up for someone,” I said.
Muldoon shook his head. “I’m afraid not. With Guy’s death, Ogden McChesney became the sole beneficiary of the fire insurance policy covering Van Hooten and McChesney. This was laid out very clearly in the policy—in the event of one partner’s death, the policy was paid out to the surviving partner. When we interviewed him at his home, McChesney admitted he had everything to gain by burning down the building. He seemed relieved to confess.”
“Did he confess to killing Guy, too?” That I would never believe.
A shadow slanted across Muldoon’s face. “No, but that’s not surprising. Murder’s a much more serious charge than arson.”
Murder could be a death sentence. The electric chair. I felt sick.
“Where is Ogden now?” my aunt asked.
“He was taken downtown for questioning.” He fidgeted with his hat. “I won’t lie to you. With that confession, he will be booked on a charge of murder.”
Aunt Irene was striding toward the door. “I’ve got to telephone Abe Faber.” Her lawyer. She turned before leaving the room, aiming a withering scowl at Muldoon. “I thought you were cleverer than this, Detective. Ogden McChesney might be many things—an old fool, first and foremost—but he is most definitely not a murderer.”
I wanted to applaud her steadfastness. And yet . . . the memory of my most recent encounters with Mr. McChesney scratched at the back of my mind. His moodiness, his disheveled appearance, the hypochondria. Barricading himself in his room after Guy’s funeral. In retrospect, he’d acted like a guilty man. My heart all but acquitted him, but my brain was struggling harder to dismiss the charges.
“I’m sorry about this, Louise,” Muldoon said when we were alone.
“If you’d only mentioned Mr. McChesney’s name to me last night, I could have told you how muddle-headed your thinking was,” I said.
“We have his confession.”
And by what means had they squeezed it out of him? Bernice’s jaundiced view of the force leapt to my mind, and squared up with a few of my own observations from watching them operate last summer. They had brutalized my upstairs neighbor, and they also probably would have kept Otto behind bars until he confessed if not for my aunt’s intervention in sending Abe Faber to free him. I wasn’t blind to all that. Policemen weren’t angels.
Yet Mr. McChesney had been acting guilty.
But guilty of murder? No.
“Mr. McChesney has been paying me to look into the arson,” I said. “Why would he do that if he’d set the fire himself?”
“Maybe he didn’t think much of your investigative skill.”
I reddened, both at his tactlessness and the memory of something Mr. McChesney had said when my aunt was convincing him to hire me. Louise isn’t a real detective, is she? No, he probably hadn’t thought I would be successful. And Muldoon didn’t have much more faith in me. It was maddening. “Last summer—”
He help up his hands, palms forward. “I know, I know. Last summer you were the incredible sleuth.”
If only I were half a foot taller so I could look down my nose at him. “Watch your sarcasm, Detective. You might be surprised to hear that we’ll soon be working for the same organization.”
“I knew that already. That’s why I came here last night. I expected you would have already received the news. When I figured out that you hadn’t, it sort of threw me.”
“So you came last night to congratulate me.”
“Yes, congratulations.” The word carried all the cheer of a man swallowing a toad.
My thank-you was likewise subdued. My elation had evaporated. “Smith told me you had written a letter in support of my application.”
“Don’t thank me for that. You might even be sorry I wrote it someday.”
“People can look back and be sorry about all sorts of things,” I said. “But applying to join the police was my choice, and you helped me, and I’m grateful.”
His gaze was almost mournful. “You’ve made some peculiar choices, Louise. Some force is driving you that I can’t understand. I worry that what happened last summer set off something inside you.”
“No, it was before that,” I said, forgetting myself. What was I doing? I fumbled for a way to derail my confession. I had never told Muldoon I’d been raped. Or that I’d given the baby away. I couldn’t imagine that I ever would.
“I’ve always been a crusader,” I said.
“Then you’ll meet nothing but frustration as a policewoman. The job isn’t what you think. Justice doesn’t always win. I’ve got murders I’ve never solved, and each one haunts me. The sadness clings to you. If you want to be a crusader, go work with orphans, or lend your energy to some civic cause. It’s not too late for you to change your mind.”
“Why did you write the letter at all? You obviously don’t believe women belong on the force.”
“There’s a place for some women in the force,” he allowed.
“But not me.” Anger stirred in me again. “You think that I’ll get bored or disgusted after a few weeks and decide to go back to secretarial work. Well, you’ll either be disappointed or astonished. I’m going to make a success of this.”
“That won’t astonish me in the least,” he said.
The man was maddening. “First you write a letter recommending me, clearly against your better judgment. Then you tell me I’ll regret ever applying to be a policewoman. And now you’re saying that you won’t be surprised if I’m successful in the job. I don’t understand you.”
“I think you’ll be grand at whatever you set your mind to,” he said. “That’s why I wrote the letter.”
“Then you admit I have some sense. That last summer wasn’t just a lucky guess.”
“Of course.”
I drew closer to him. “Then listen to me now. I don’t know why Mr. McChesney confessed, I only know he didn’t do it. Perhaps he set the fire, but he certainly didn’t murder Guy. There has to be some mistake. It’s Hugh Van Hooten you need to look at.”
“Why? What would he stand to gain by murdering his brother?”
Did it necessarily have to be about gain? “They were brothers, and they weren’t close. Haven’t you ever h
eard of Cain and Abel?”
“I didn’t detect hatred in Hugh’s tone when he spoke about Guy.”
“He must have been laying it on thick for you, then. He had only contempt for Guy.”
“Contempt, sure.” Muldoon gave his chin a contemplative scratch, as if he thought contempt was just a normal reaction to Guy Van Hooten.
“And as it happens, Hugh did have a motive for killing Guy.”
And out it all came. I told him about Myrna, and the baby, and Jacob’s visit to the air park. I laid out the overheard conversations, and Guy’s puzzling Would you kill our mother? I even revealed my unscientific sampling of households with rat poison.
The telling took a while. Muldoon let me go on until I finally ran down like a windup toy in need of a few sharp key turns.
“And that’s not even mentioning the three thousand dollars Leonard Cain said he gave Guy that night,” I added at the end. “Where did all that money go?”
“Up in smoke.”
“And Guy just happened to be killed after receiving such a large sum?”
“We aren’t sure of the exact time of his death. He might have done anything after Cain paid him. Maybe he lived long enough to post the money to the Cohens.”
“I wouldn’t live in a tenement if I had three thousand dollars, would you?”
He looked contemplative, but then shook his head. “It doesn’t matter about the money. Or the baby. Or the rat poison. We have a confession given freely and willingly.”
I was still skeptical of that confession. And why was Muldoon so quick to convict Mr. McChesney of Guy’s murder? “Won’t you even look into Hugh?”
“The taxpayers don’t thank us for poking into the lives of citizens when we already have a suspect who’s confessed in custody.”
“That confession can’t be real.”
“I know, I know. You don’t believe McChesney’s confession, but you’ve got a head full of bees when it comes to everyone else. Theories buzzing like crazy.”
I crossed my arms and said nothing. I could argue the point till I was hoarse, I realized, and it wouldn’t change the fact that Mr. McChesney was behind bars. For the moment.
My silence put Muldoon off balance.
“I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news.” He fiddled with his hat again. “You do realize I came here as a friend?”
I nodded, barely. I wasn’t feeling very friendly toward him at the moment, even if he had written that letter.
Discouragement tugged at his mouth. “We always seem to get off on the wrong foot.”
“Because you keep arresting my friends.”
“I should go.” He didn’t move, though. “I expect we’ll be seeing each other again soon.”
“I expect we will.”
He looked as if he wanted to say more, but gave up. “I’ll show myself out.”
When he was gone, I collapsed onto Aunt Irene’s reading chaise and frowned at the glass-fronted bookcases. How were we going to get Mr. McChesney out of this tangle?
Or was he—horrible thought—guilty?
Aunt Irene bustled back into the room. “Get up, chicken. You’re going downtown.”
“Did you get a hold of Mr. Faber?” I asked.
“Yes, Abe’s on his way to try to extract Ogden from the grips of the law. And now you need to pop your hat on and grab a pad and pencil. You’re going to be Abe’s assistant today. He’ll be waiting for you.”
“What does Mr. Faber say to that?”
“I can’t give you a direct quote, but I recognize cursing even when it’s in Hebrew.”
I was eager to go, although I wasn’t sure I was the right person for this particular job. “Wouldn’t you rather go see Mr. McChesney yourself?”
She waved me toward the door. “I would just become an emotional mess and fly apart. Probably say something in the drama of the moment that I’d regret.” She took out her handkerchief and blew her nose. I worried she’d fly apart right before my eyes, but in the next moment she straightened and aimed her most commanding gaze at me. “I’m trusting you to prove this is all balderdash, Louise.”
A shot of panic froze me. Not that I believed Mr. McChesney was capable of cold-blooded murder. But his behavior had been suspicious. And he had admitted to setting the fire. The fire he’d said he would pay me to look into . . .
Aunt Irene’s eyes narrowed at my hesitation. “He’s innocent of that murder,” she repeated. “You knew it the moment that Mr. Muldoon told us.” Her expression soured. “Detective.” She looked as if she wanted to spit. “He doesn’t deserve the title. And to think how I welcomed him in my home and thought him so fascinating. You’ll be a much better detective than that sorry excuse for an investigator.”
“I won’t be a police detective, you know. Not for a long while.” Maybe never.
“Nonsense. The captains or whoever’s in charge at those precincts will see your worth. You’ll prove it by freeing Ogden.”
My aunt wasn’t just expressing her confidence that I would succeed, I realized. She was commanding me to succeed.
CHAPTER 12
Jefferson Market Courthouse, where Mr. Faber had instructed me to meet him, wasn’t far from my flat. I’d even been inside it once before. As the El rushed toward that fantastical Gothic clock tower, I tried to imagine poor Mr. McChesney among the criminals housed there awaiting trial or sentencing. It didn’t seem possible. And what if I failed to find proof of his innocence and he ended up being sent to the penitentiary forever with the most hardened men? It would be the end of him. That would break Aunt Irene’s heart.
Mr. Faber, who had helped get Otto released from police custody last summer, met me at the building’s entrance. “I really don’t see the necessity of your coming, Miss Faulk.” He stood a few inches taller than my five foot five, and was dressed impeccably in a dark suit, black coat, and bowler hat. He carried a handled leather case, which he gave to me with a smile. “But I trust your aunt’s instincts, and as you’re here you may as well act the part.”
I took the case from him, dipping a little against its weight. “What’s in here?”
“The law is a weighty matter,” he joked without smiling. Inside, we were ricocheted between a series of clerks and officers who asked us the same questions. Names. Who were we here to see. Purpose of visit. Without fail, my presence with Faber drew extra scrutiny. I might have been the first female legal assistant anyone had ever seen in New York City, which made me stand up a little taller. I took my trailblazing seriously, even if it was bogus.
Finally, we were led into a private room, bare but for several hard chairs and a wood table whose surface was a devarnished network of scratches. The walls stood blank except for a framed reproduction of a painting of grim, long-nosed Peter Stuyvesant on one wall and a photograph of William Howard Taft hanging crookedly on another. Wilson had been elected a year ago, but evidently the gears of government turned slowly even when it came to picture replacement.
At last, the door opened and Mr. McChesney was escorted in by not one but two guards. He wore a brown suit, wrinkled, but it was his own. I don’t know why I took any comfort from that detail when his thin wrists were manacled. I knew the reason for the handcuffs, of course. My upstairs neighbor, Max, had escaped from custody from this place last summer and hadn’t been seen since.
Abe Faber and I stood. At the sight of me, Mr. McChesney seemed shocked, and not pleasantly. “Louise! What was your aunt thinking, allowing you to come to this place?”
“I’m here as Mr. Faber’s assistant,” I said.
The lawyer turned to the guard closest to Mr. McChesney. “Surely I may speak to my client without handcuffs.”
The guards exchanged glances and then looked at Mr. McChesney, obviously sizing up their elderly suspect as harmless.
The handcuffs were unlocked, and the two guards withdrew to the hallway. When the door closed behind them, Mr. Faber gestured to the table. “Let’s sit down and talk this through.”
&
nbsp; He spoke as if he were addressing a wayward child, not a man who stood accused of murder. Yet his gentle tone had a calming effect on Mr. McChesney, who seated himself across from us.
“There’s really nothing to say,” he said. “I’ve already explained everything to the detectives.”
Mr. Faber’s lips flattened into a grim line. “Well, I have plenty to say, and the first and most important thing is that you should talk as little as possible to the police.”
“What am I to do if they ask me questions? I have nothing to hide.” He hung his head. “Not anymore.”
“From what I’ve heard, you’ve already given them enough information to send you to the electric chair.”
“I deserve no better. Believe me, no threat of punishment could torment me more than what I’ve already been through.”
His words made that knot in my insides tighten. I knew he’d confessed, but his verifying that confession chipped a crack in my heart. I reached out my hand to his. “Then you did start the fire?”
He looked surprised that I would ask. “Didn’t the police tell you?”
“Detective Muldoon said you’d confessed, but Aunt Irene and I hoped that there was some circumstance . . . that you were covering for someone, perhaps.”
He cast his eyes at the table, where someone had scratched a tictac-toe. “Poor Irene. I’ve let her down.”
I pitied him, but I couldn’t help feeling incensed, too. “You lied to me. You hired me to look into the fire that you had set. And then you suggested that Leonard Cain might have been the culprit.”
“I know. I was in shock. I didn’t want to believe I was responsible for poor Guy’s horrible death. And Cain is a bad man, isn’t he? Cravenly, I thought that if he took the blame, I might wriggle free. I can’t tell you how sorry I am, Louise. Grievously sorry.”
Mr. Faber cleared his throat. “Before we tread the path of sorrow, let’s get the facts straight. You set the fire that resulted in your building burning down, just as you told the police?”