The Lunatic Fringe: A Novel Wherein Theodore Roosevelt Meets the Pink Angel

by William L. DeAndrea

  “We had her baptized into the Church, in case she—she died, then we kept her in a room in the house until she was well. Everyone loved her, the girls and the gentlemen alike. She was bright and quick-minded, and she would hear the gentlemen speak of books and music and the like, and she’d pick it right up. More than once, I arranged for her to be adopted, to stay with a decent family and live there, but she always ran away from them and came back to me. Once, she looked at me with those big brown eyes and said, ‘Mama Nanette’—that’s what she called me—‘why do you send me away? Don’t I love you good enough?’ After that, I never had the heart to do it again.

  “Cleo blossomed into a beautiful young woman, as you have seen. I dreaded it, but I have found dreading something never prevents its occurrence. Then, about three years ago the day I had dreaded most of all came. Cleo wanted to go to work in the house.

  “I forbade it, of course, but she was stubborn. She said I was the only mother, and the girls were all her sisters, and the only friends she had ever known. That she loved us all, and was nothing loath to do anything we would do, for she knew we were ...”

  The old woman began to cry.

  “You are a wicked, wicked woman,” Roosevelt said, his voice tight and dangerous.

  “What would you have me do?” Madam Nanette exploded. “Throw her back into the street to starve, rather than expose her to my wickedness? Reject her love, the only love that offended little, loving heart could find it safe to give?”

  “You allowed a child to prostitute herself!”

  “What would her fate have been on the street? She prostituted herself to be like her friends, the only friends she had ever known! She wanted to pay me back—that’s what she said! Pay me back, for giving her a life out of the gutter. As though she hadn’t paid me back a hundred times, just by being herself.

  “Yes, Mr. Roosevelt, I am, by your standards, a wicked woman. And I allowed that beautiful, trusting, holy child to follow me in my wicked ways, and when my days are through, I shall pay for it.

  “But my defense shall be this: Where were the good Christians? Where were the righteous who condemn me? How came an innocent child to spend so many years living in gutters and eating from garbage cans that she forgot her own name?

  “God knows I was not the best woman to raise a daughter. And He knows I should have been stronger in keeping her from following my ways. But He also knows I was the one He placed there to find her the night she almost died, and He knows I and my girls did our best, because there was nobody else. Nobody else.”

  Muldoon looked at the Commissioner. Roosevelt was silent, but he didn’t look convinced. Muldoon didn’t know how he felt. He used to think telling right from wrong was easy.

  “In any case,” said Madam Nanette, after drinking tea, “I have been punished already. Last May, when I decided to retire, I announced my decision to all the girls at once. I had assumed that Cleo would know I intended for us to live together, as a mother and daughter, quietly and respectably. I am quite a wealthy woman, you know.

  “But I hadn’t known the scars of her early childhood had gone so deep. She thought that, by my retirement, I was abandoning her, just as the unknown woman who bore her had abandoned her so many years ago.

  “Within the week, she had gone, leaving in the middle of the night. Her note said she had gone with one of the customers, who would treat her kindly and keep her clothed and well. She—she thanked me for—for being like a mother to her.” Madam Nanette was crying copiously, now. As he had done for Cleo, Muldoon gave the old woman his handkerchief.

  “Thank you,” she said. “The man had left something, too. A chest containing two hundred double-eagles. Four thousand dollars. Four thousand dollars for the dearest thing in my life!”

  She cried into Muldoon’s handkerchief. “There, there,” Muldoon said. “We’ll find her, you’ll be havin’ a big reunion. Everything will be all right.”

  “Will you, really? I am not usually this emotional. I advise you not to toy with my feelings.”

  “We’ve got to be findin’ her anyway, so why not? Here, eat some of this lovely cake the old geezer brought you. Cryin’ makes you weak.”

  The old woman’s face broke into a smile. “I’d quite forgotten about the almond torte. You don’t mind if I—”

  “Please do,” Roosevelt said, with a hint of a shrug. He was not enjoying his afternoon.

  Madam Nanette took a bite of torte, and frowned. “Strong,” she said.

  Muldoon took out his notebook. “Now, could you be tellin’ us, ma’am, exactly what customer or customers would be most likely candidates for Cleo to be runnin’ off with?”

  She took another bite of cake, then put the fork down. “I don’t believe I care for any more of that. Do you know, it actually burned my tongue?”

  “What?” Roosevelt asked, horrified.

  “There were sev-several ...” The old woman’s voice trailed off into silence. A look of horror and acute discomfort came to her face. She made a croaking noise, and fell from her chair to the carpet.

  Muldoon went to the door to shout for a nurse. The Commissioner went to the old woman. “It’s no use, Muldoon,” Roosevelt said. “The torte burned her tongue. That’s when I knew. Curse the fiend!” he spat.

  “Sir?”

  “He killed her under our noses. The woman is dead—”

  “Oh, no!”

  “And I should be hanged for a fool. Fiendishly clever of Meister, or whatever his real name is, wouldn’t you say? To use an almond torte to disguise the fragrance. I—I passed him in the hall. I shall see him executed for this, Muldoon. I swear it!”

  “What fragrance, sir?” Muldoon was hopelessly bewildered.

  “The fragrance of bitter almonds, Muldoon. That torte was literally filled with prussic acid!”

  IV.

  Baxter had to work to keep his face suitably grim as he handed the telephone to T. Avery Hand.

  “It’s the Rabbi, sir,” he said.

  “What now? Baxter, did he say? Did he say anything?”

  “I didn’t think it my place to ask,” the butler replied.

  Hand was a coward, he thought. It disgusted him. All the capitalists were cowards—they gathered wealth to gain power, because only with their power could they assuage their fear. The Giants of Industry were no giants at all, which, Baxter thought, was a bit of a shame, since they would make that much less noise when they toppled.

  “Excuse me?” Baxter said.

  “This is a fine time for your mind to be wandering, Baxter,” Hand said. He had the mouthpiece tightly covered. “I said, as soon as I have done with this, I intend to get in touch with Sperling. I’m going to have him and a few of his men stay here until after the wedding. Have rooms prepared for them, and notify the cook, so that she may do any additional shopping. I no longer intend—that is, the next time this Rabbi pays a call, he won’t find us unprepared.”

  Baxter bowed and left. Inside, he was shouting with laughter. The next time the Rabbi called, Baxter knew, neither Hand, nor Bryan, nor anyone else would know what had hit him. And all the hoodlums in New York couldn’t stop it.

  Hand uncovered the receiver. “Yes?” he said.

  The voice he had grown to hate whispered to him. “How could you ever have expected to be safe with the brothel keeper still in this city?”

  Hand was confused. “What—what do you mean?”

  “Don’t worry, I got to her before the police did. You are far luckier than you deserve to be, Hand.”

  “You got to her? You killed her? But she didn’t even know it was I who—”

  “Perhaps not. But your name would have been on the list. Her death is your fault. If you had told me before, we could have gotten her safely out of town.”

  “How did you find out?” Hand’s head was spinning.

  The person on the other end clicked his tongue. “Perhaps you talk in your sleep, Hand.” There was another click in the millionaire’s ear as the conn
ection was broken.

  Hand was afraid he would lose the use of his senses. What in the name of God was happening to him? First, this Muldoon, now Madam Nanette. Hand seemed to be trapped in the middle of a spider’s web of death that was being woven ever wider by forces beyond his understanding. He was afraid, so afraid he even had to admit it to himself.

  The telephone rang again. Hand watched it as a man would watch an adder coiled to strike, then, with a half scream, he snatched the instrument up.

  “What?” he demanded. “What do you want of me now?”

  There was silence for several seconds, then the startled voice of the Reverend Lewis Burley. “Avery? Is that you? Is that T. Avery Hand speaking?”

  Hand closed his eyes and breathed deeply. “Reverend?”

  “Yes, Avery. Are you feeling all right? You gave me a fright, just now, a severe fright.”

  The industrialist thought he would make himself laugh, but once he started, he found it took an effort to make himself stop. “I’m fine, sir. I’m sorry I snapped at you. There is a promising young man I am trying to train to be office manager, but he—he calls so often for advice and instructions that he vexes me to death. I thought you were he.”

  “Ah, you must have patience with him, Avery. Your office is no trifling enterprise, after all. You have trusted the boy with a responsibility that must be awesome, awesome. I would find it so. Not as awesome, of course,” the clergyman continued, “as your own responsibility.”

  Hand went cold. His voice was the voice of a dead man. “What did you say?”

  Reverend Burley guffawed. “I said awesome, Avery, not fatal. Marriage, my dear boy, marriage. Surely you haven’t forgotten. You can’t have forgotten our darling, darling Essie May.”

  Hand had forgotten. “Of course not,” he said. “I can hardly wait for the happy day.”

  “Yes, well, that is the purpose of my call. My daughter is arriving late Saturday, or early Sunday. Though of course, you may not see her before the ceremony Sunday afternoon. Women must have their way,” he added. “When it comes to the wedding day, women must have their way.”

  Hand mumbled agreement.

  “Well, I just wanted you to know all was proceeding according to plan. William has been heading east, campaigning, and he will arrive with Essie May. It’s going to be a glorious day,” he concluded. “A glorious day.”

  “A glorious day,” Hand echoed. He said goodbye to the Reverend and replaced the receiver. He stood for a few seconds and rubbed his eyes, then climbed slowly up the big staircase to find what comfort he could in the arms of the woman he loved.

  FRIDAY

  the twenty-eighth of August, 1896

  I.

  “IT’S SIMPLY ASTONISHING, MULDOON,” Theodore Roosevelt said, discarding yet another morning newspaper. “I expected by now to be the laughing stock of the city. Yet none of these has any mention of me whatsoever. Only the Journal even goes so far as to hint Mrs. Le Clerc might have died of anything other than old age and general debility. It—oh, I am sorry, Miss Muldoon.” Katie had come in from the kitchen and swooped down on the discarded papers. “I know I am somewhat eccentric in my reading habits. I am accustomed to picking up after myself, however.” “Eccentric” was an understatement. Roosevelt was known to read magazines by ripping out each page as he finished it, crumpling it up, and throwing it to the floor.

  “I do the pickin’ up in me own house, thank you,” Katie replied. She was not used to having visitors dropping in at quarter past eight in the morning, before the housecleaning was half done. Apparently, the Commissioner had led Dennis into some damn-fool embarrassing situation yesterday, and had spent the night roaming the streets, taking out his wrath on unsuspecting policemen. She was pleased to note that Dennis had had enough mother wit to leave the old walrus to it, and come home and get some sleep.

  Roosevelt picked up the Times. “Nothing here either,” he said after a short time (he was a rapid reader). “Frankly, Muldoon, I am at a loss to account for it.”

  Muldoon took a bite of a red New York State apple from the basket the Commissioner had brought with him. We’re getting to be real lace-curtain Irish, he thought—fruit in the house when nobody’s sick.

  “Perhaps,” he said, replying to Mr. Roosevelt’s implied question, “somethin’ made them see there was no benefit in embarrassin’ a high official of the Administration as was tryin’ to do his duty.”

  “Ho,” Roosevelt laughed. “After the things they’ve said of me, I’d like to know what that something could be.”

  Muldoon knew; but he had come to understand his superior well enough to realize he could never tell him. It had been Muldoon, practicing a little ward-level politics that had kept the news of “Meister’s” daring murder quiet. A little judicious goodwill buying among the staff at Mrs. Fenwick’s Home, and a phone call to Hearst, with intimations that keeping confidence and faith went both ways, had effectively cut off the story. Muldoon had guessed, rightly, that if Hearst’s Journal were to hint the old woman’s death had not been a natural one, the other papers would all but ignore the story, hoping to make Hearst look foolish.

  Muldoon finished his apple, went to the kitchen to dispose of the core, then returned and said to the Commissioner, “Have you anything for me to be doin’ today, sir?”

  “No, unfortunately, I can’t think of anything useful. Perhaps the normal investigation of Mrs. Le Clerc’s death may yield some results.”

  “Mmmm,” said Muldoon, not optimistically. “I suppose it’s back to the art galleries, then.” Muldoon sighed. “At least I know who it is I’m lookin’ for.”

  The kitchen door opened, and Katie reappeared. “I don’t know,” she said, “why I just don’t open a blasted cafe and have done with it. You’ve got a caller, Dennis. A Mrs. Sturdevant she’s callin’ herself.”

  Muldoon and Roosevelt looked at each other. “A strange time to come calling,” the Commissioner said. He seemed not to hear Katie’s snort.

  Muldoon said, “Show her in, Katie, if you please.”

  Mrs. Sturdevant, as usual, was red faced, but it seemed to Muldoon she was quite a bit more red faced than usual.

  “Dennis!” the landlady panted. “Ah, and Mr. Roosevelt as well. Well, Mr. Smarty-Pants Police Commissioner, if you weren’t here to beg this poor boy to take his job back, you soon will be.”

  “Ah, Mrs. Sturdevant ...” Muldoon began.

  “No woman indeed.” The big blond landlady muttered to herself as she rummaged through the carpetbag slung over her arm. “Don’t you worry, Dennis. Here it is!”

  With a flourish, she pulled an envelope from her bag. To Muldoon, it didn’t seem worth the fanfare, until she handed it to him. The envelope was postmarked Rochester, New York, and the return address was that of the Eastman Company. It had been mailed to Mr. Evan Crandall, of New York City. Muldoon remembered the Kodak he’d found in the dead cartoonist’s desk.

  Roosevelt remembered, too. “May I have that envelope, please, Muldoon?” he asked. “Madam,” he said to Mrs. Sturdevant, “how did this come to be in your possession?”

  “It was brought to my building,” she said. “In the second post. By the postman. I never bothered to tell them about Crandall’s death because I can’t recall a single piece of mail he ever got besides this. Though I can’t say that surprises me any longer, now that I know what kind of man he was.” She shuddered. “When Mr. Sturdevant was alive, he used to say, ‘Ethel—’”

  “You’ve opened the envelope,” the Commissioner said. He hated to interrupt a lady, but he had an intuition that with this one he had no other choice.

  “That’s right. And when I saw what was inside, I knew I had to tell Dennis right away, never mind I left my kitchen floor half unscrubbed.”

  “It’s a serious offense to open someone else’s mail, Mrs. Sturdevant,” Roosevelt said.

  The landlady gave him a look that indicated a decided lack of faith in the intelligence of the Police Department of the
City of New York.

  “Then I’m guilty,” she said. “Let Crandall press charges.”

  “Madam—”

  “Ah, Mr. Roosevelt,” Muldoon put in, “since the envelope’s already been opened and all, and no one can say we’ve been up to anything wrong, how about our havin’ a little peek at the contents?”

  “Ha!” said the Commissioner, falling in with the spirit of the gathering. “Bully idea. Since this kind lady has presented us with a fait accompli, as the lawyers say, let’s have that little bit of a peek.”

  He tilted the envelope and let the contents spill out into his hand. Photographs, twenty of them, taken at various places about the city, under a variety of weather and lighting conditions, at various differences, but all of the same subject.

  “Have a look at these, Muldoon,” Roosevelt invited. “I believe the subject will not be totally unfamiliar to you.”

  Mrs. Sturdevant beamed; she gave the impression of being just seconds away from starting to dance with joy.

  Muldoon looked at the first photograph the Commissioner showed him. It showed a young woman emerging from the shop of a fashionable dressmaker. Her face, though shaded by a lacy parasol, was clearly discernible.

  “Oh, my yes,” Muldoon breathed. He gazed at the picture. By Christ, she was just as beautiful with her clothes on. “That’s her. That’s Madam Nanette’s little Cleo.”

  II.

  Mrs. Sturdevant made them tea and muffins. Muldoon and the Commissioner had been in the landlady’s flat for close to an hour and three quarters, studying the photographs—with unsuccessful side trips to Crandall’s flat to look for more. If the woman had been one little bit less attractive, Muldoon thought, he would have long since gotten sick of the sight of her. Cleo coming out of the shop. Cleo going into another shop. Cleo alighting from a carriage with some kind of light-colored smudge on the door. Cleo adjusting her hat. The woman’s picture started to swim before his eyes.

  Even the indefatigible Roosevelt showed signs of weariness. He removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes, then replaced them and reached for his cup. “This is excellent tea, Mrs. Sturdevant,” he called. “Quite the best tea I have had in months.”