Very well. She is Emily Thornhill, thirty-five years old, of good family, “finished” at Miss Porter’s School, in Farmington, Connecticut, graduate of the University of Chicago, journalist for the Chicago Tribune. Summers with her paternal grandparents in rural Iowa after her father’s death, when she was seven. A daddy’s girl, and then her grandfather’s, certainly. Seldom saw her mother, who was nervous, “not well”; who employed a governess, early on, and later, widowed, hired an “assistant” to manage details, including Emily’s visits home and her coming out, a proper society debut. Emily supports her mother now with funds from a family trust, in a genteel facility with views of the lake. She no longer knows Emily’s name, but greets her as a social equal with whom she is distantly acquainted. Emily is her family’s sole heir; there is enough to ensure comfort, if not luxury. Her father’s parents, who loved her father and his only child, were her true home; she lived for those summer months and the train rides to Cedar Rapids. Her grandparents met her in the wagon, with a basket full of sandwiches and cookies, until Grandmam was ill, and then Granddad. They’d died, two years apart, during Emily’s summers off from college, when she was there to nurse them; she counted herself fortunate and did not pine for a different life. She is happily unmarried, though she is not a maiden, and lives in a doorman building. Working girl still applies, in Emily’s estimation, for there are few terms to describe someone like herself; spinster is inadequate in her case. Her hairdresser says they will dye her hair, subtly, when the time comes, but never cut it, the light brown color is so lovely against her complexion, and her thick curls are easily concealed in tight chignons or the Gibson girl styles she favors: old fashioned, respectable, to soften her smart suits.
She checks her image in the rearview mirror, and carefully wipes any trace of lipstick from her mouth. Malone is not the first to require that she substantiate her qualifications.
• • •
He stood as she entered his office. “Mayor McKee asked me to meet with you, Miss . . . Thornhill?”
“Yes. Mr. Malone.” She advanced to shake his hand across the desk. He was a tall man, handsome, distinguished even, with strong hands. His palm was cushioned and fleshy, powerful, and the instant of contact was disorienting, like the minute shift of a room. She was glad the desk remained between them, and stepped back, irritated with herself. Perhaps he had this effect generally. She did not typically succumb to general effects.
He regarded her, then indicated a chair at a round table to the right of his desk.
She took her notebook from her bag and began writing. Mahogany paneling, deep blue carpet, massive desk. Tasteful, not opulent. Side entrance exit. Malone, as described.
He was speaking. “The story will break quite soon. No one can stop that process, which will take on a life of its own. Mayor McKee feels the community can trust you to be factual, yet sensitive, particularly to the family.” He took in her attire, her posture in his upholstered office chair, her face, her eyes, her gaze, intently focused on the notebook in which she was writing. “The Tribune,” he said, “the most influential newspaper in the metropolitan area, will set the tone.”
“That is my intent, Mr. Malone.” She felt his gaze and wondered what he saw. Her hair was up; she had not worn a hat, as it was a warm day. She looked at him evenly. “As you know, Mrs. Verberg arranged that I interview the housekeeper, Mrs. Abernathy, today at the Eicher home. I will interview Mr. Charles O’Boyle this evening in Chicago, before departing for West Virginia. I should arrive there a day after the Park Ridge police whose travel you funded.” She wrote, noble, protective, skeptical.
“I did not fund them, Miss Thornhill. I merely supplemented town funds in the interest of time. We are all neighbors in Park Ridge.” Silence. He waited to catch her eye and then held her gaze, as though demanding she acknowledge the point. “Their presence in Clarksburg was necessary in order to effect Pierson’s arrest, on the basis of numerous letters to Mrs. Eicher, found at the Eicher home. He fled in haste after police questioned him here, a week or so ago, nearly eight weeks after the family disappeared.”
“Understood, Mr. Malone.” She understood that he felt some responsibility, far more deeply than did the neighbor women. He was childless, they’d told her. These were fatherless children beyond the realm of protection. She herself had glimpsed that realm. If not for her grandparents, she would have lived within it, despite any material advantage. “Do excuse me,” she said. “The neighbor, Mrs. Verberg, is a member of my Chicago travel club, as is Mrs. McKee. They asked me to become involved. I do investigative reporting—mostly political and social issues. Their accounts, as well as my phone conversation with Mr. O’Boyle, indicate that concern is warranted. O’Boyle was apparently the first to contact the police about—Pierson, is it?”
“Yes, Pierson. I never met him and can’t comment on neighborhood talk; I live on the other side of the park.”
“But you were the Eichers’ banker for many years? You, perhaps, advised Mrs. Eicher on financial matters?”
“Yes. I knew her husband, Heinrich Eicher, a businessman—insurance—a silversmith as well, who ran his wife’s enterprise, a crafts workshop, silverwork mostly, on their property.”
“You knew them socially, as well?” She fixed her gaze on her notebook. His hair was thick, chestnut, silver at the temples. He wore it rather long.
“No. Mrs. Malone is an invalid. We don’t socialize. But I met with Heinrich Eicher several times in this office, over the years. After his death, a sudden death, a streetcar accident, five or six years ago, I met with Mrs. Eicher, and continued to do so.”
“You advised her in the wake of Heinrich’s death.” It was a statement. Emily could feel Malone’s presence in the room. Masculine. A hint of delicate, musky fragrance, like crushed flowers. She glanced at his desk and wrote, cologne? subtle. No ashtray/pipe stand, photographs, keepsakes. Trays of papers, correspondence, three deep, perfectly organized. Invalid wife. Streetcar, sudden death. She could easily check records on Heinrich Eicher.
“Heinrich did not leave her well situated. They’d invested in the workshop, her fine arts business, but the lack of resources after she was widowed, and then of course the Crash, finished that. The children were young. There was Heinrich’s mother, Lavinia, to help, but she died after an illness of some months, this past Thanksgiving.”
“Leaving only Mrs. Eicher, Asta, to raise the children, support the household. And to do that—”
“Miss Thornhill, these are confidential matters. I’m sharing information with you only because Mayor McKee asked me to do so.” He stood and paced, behind his desk. “I am not optimistic. A woman, middle-aged, goes off with a man no one knows. She tells her neighbor she’s to be married to a man of means.”
“And what did she tell you, Mr. Malone?”
“Nothing. I would have asked to meet the man for a frank talk, with Mrs. Eicher’s permission, of course. Any honorable man would have agreed to such a meeting, even requested it.” He stood and walked to the window, which looked out on the alley passage beside the bank. “She wanted to stay in her home until the children were of age, and asked, last January, that the bank take over the mortgage and lend her a small sum. The debt, as well as the mortgage owed, would be paid when the house was sold.” He turned to face Emily. “She had not accepted my advice in the past. I’m afraid she did not confide in me because she believed I would think her . . . unwise.”
Emily allowed herself to look at his hands. A ring, of course, though Emily doubted a wedding ring daunted certain Park Ridge ladies. A sterling reputation, Mrs. McKee had said, and the wife, delicate. Catholic, though Malone was not. Her priest, apparently, called on her at home. “And did you, Mr. Malone, think Mrs. Eicher unwise?”
“She would not sell the house, reduce her circumstances, conserve her resources. She felt she could not seek employment outside the home, though she was a skilled artisan.”
“But, for income—”
“Mr
s. Eicher took in roomers, the past five years, until Lavinia’s illness.”
“And this past spring, in late June, she left her home with Pierson.”
Malone turned from the window. “I’m told Pierson looked respectable, but the discovery of these letters, obviously left in haste, is ominous. I should have stopped him, saved the children, or at least tried.”
“You?”
He sat at his desk, quietly addressing the room. “The day they left, I was in Chicago on banking business. My employee reached me by telephone early on July second. She said Grethe Eicher was at the window, with a note, purportedly from Mrs. Eicher, requesting one thousand dollars cash. I asked her, was Grethe alone. Yes, Grethe was alone.”
“That was unusual?”
“Very much so. Grethe was often in the bank, but always with her mother. Once, just before the children disappeared, with her brother.” He paused. “She was, too trusting. Slow—an illness, as a baby.”
He had lovely brown eyes, golden almost.
“Sad,” Emily said.
“More than sad. I told the teller to say it was not her mother’s signature, and in case Grethe didn’t know what that meant, to ask her to return to the bank, early the next morning, when I would help her personally. Someone was forging a note, but I had no idea Pierson was at the house, no idea of the urgency. If I’d been here that day, I would have accompanied Grethe home, to confront him. If I’d phoned the police from Chicago immediately, and dispatched them, on a hunch, to the Eicher home—”
“The police,” she said quietly, “would have detained him, on a word from you?”
“I don’t make spurious requests of the police,” he said. “They could have detained him, in fact, if I’d had the note in hand, but the teller, another mistake, gave it back to Grethe. Still, the police might have prompted him to leave without the children.”
“At that point, though—early July—Pierson was thought to be Mrs. Eicher’s fiancé. I’m told that Abernathy gave the police a letter in Asta’s hand, saying that Pierson was coming for the children.”
“Yes.” Resigned, he bowed his head slightly, and touched the fingertips of one hand to his brow. It was a deeply mournful gesture.
She judged him near fifty, perhaps, but his bearing was that of a younger man. Broad chest and shoulders. Riding, Mrs. McKee had said. Large home and grounds, his own barn and groom, a few acres of pasture, a pond. City Council member, pillar of the community. He certainly seemed so.
Silent, he leaned back in the chair, lost in some middle distance. Then he said, “Do you ride, Miss Thornhill?”
“I do, Mr. Malone, though not for some time.”
“No?”
She felt such heaviness emanating from him, but pressed on for his sake. “I learned dressage at finishing school, but spent summers on my grandparents’ Iowa farm. My grandfather raised quarter horses, and he was determined I ride like the wind.”
“Ah. Good man.”
“He was a very good man. I still miss him.”
Malone said softly, “You are going there, to that place.”
“Yes. Tomorrow.” She felt herself on some precipice above a raging sea, that he was standing beside her, had arrived before her.
“Have you covered this sort of case before?” His tone was personal now, as though opening some ground between them.
“I do what you might call the woman’s angle on hard news—I’ve seen some horrific things, children who’ve died of neglect or preventable illness in the settlement houses, gamblers shot in hotels, murders of wives, or husbands. Mine is not a lady’s profession, I’m often told, but I enjoy membership in the Junior League, the Women’s Travel Club—”
“I ask you to be in touch with me, Miss Thornhill. While you are gone, and after your interviews today. I would like to send an instruction, to Mrs. Abernathy, that she surrender her key to the Eicher residence, to you. I ask that you return it to me, here, in this office, after concluding your interview. Would that be a terrible imposition?”
“No, Mr. Malone. And I would be happy for your consultation, going forward.”
He sealed a note addressed to Mrs. Elizabeth Abernathy, and gave it to Emily. “I would accompany you, to deliver this note and accept the key personally, but you’ll want to see through the house, and Mrs. Abernathy may be more forthcoming if you are alone. Lock the house when you leave. Nothing must be disturbed.”
“I will not touch, or disturb, anything. I merely want to take notes, and . . . stand in the rooms.”
Such an admission was unlike her. She suddenly felt they’d been talking for hours. In fact, it was less than thirty minutes.
“I shall wait for you, here,” Malone said. “You can park your automobile in back, as I do. Ring the bell at this side entrance, and I will let you in.”
She had closed her notebook, packed up her bag. “Mr. Malone, one more question, if I might. Do you think she went with him, willingly?”
“Oh yes, I have no doubt.”
“Why? Was she reckless?”
Malone stood and moved to the front of his desk, not two feet from her. “Not at all. She was artistic, well bred, careful, even a bit reclusive. But emotionally desperate for some years, I think. And then financially so. Desperate people see a chance, and take it. Some of them are quite unlucky.”
She met his gaze openly and felt him near her, like a force. “Only desperate people take risks, Mr. Malone?”
“Risk can seem compelling, even necessary. If asked, Miss Thornhill, I counsel deliberation, always, no matter how painful.” He stepped toward her.
Immediately, she stood and moved close to him. The fragrance, so subtle, was the smell of his skin. It was as though she’d stepped into some inchoate sympathy, charged and alive, between them. They stood so, looking at one another, and did not need to speak.
• • •
She found the Eicher home easily, a mere seven blocks away. Abernathy, tall, thin, her gray hair pulled back in a severe bun, stood waiting by the front steps. She held a dog’s leash in one hand, and the dog, small, dark brown, stocky, sat panting at her feet, beside a square basket. Emily, locking the car, took a look at the house, a pretty place with grounds behind, and waved at Abernathy, a gesture of acknowledgment.
Abernathy made no response, but the dog tore suddenly forward, dragging its leash, to greet Emily effusively. Jumping up, paws on her skirt, it backed off to execute a kind of circle on its hind legs. “Goodness,” Emily said. “Very pleased to meet you.” The dog was coughing, seemingly, as though overexcited or asthmatic. Emily leaned down, and the terrier jumped into her arms. It was about the size and heft of a twelve-pound bag of flour, thicker than it looked, solid, and sat still, comfortably adjusting itself to the crook of her arm and the brace of her hip.
“You’ve a very friendly dog,” she said, by way of greeting.
“That is not my dog,” Abernathy said. “It is the Eichers’ dog.”
“Was it choking, before?”
“No, it was barking. That is, it can’t bark.”
“Oh.” Emily put the dog down, and it ran up the front steps, leash trailing. It was funny looking, a Boston terrier with eyes that bulged to the sides like marbles, and ears that seemed too big for its head. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Mrs. Abernathy, and I thank you for coming.”
“Yes, Mrs.,” Abernathy said.
Emily made no move to shake her hand. Abernathy didn’t appear to want to be touched. “Mrs. Abernathy, I am acquainted with Mr. Malone, president of First National Bank in Park Ridge, and with Mr. Charles O’Boyle, friend of the Eicher family, and you know that I want to interview you concerning the Eichers, and Pierson, Cornelius Pierson.”
“Yes, and I’m to let you into the house.”
“That’s right. I am allowed to see through the house. And I have a note from Mr. Malone on bank letterhead, authorizing you to surrender your key to me, which I will deliver to him.” She gave Malone’s letter to Abernathy and look
ed up at the entrance, where the dog stood, nose pressed to the front door. “So, the dog hasn’t been here since you left, some weeks ago?”
“No.” Abernathy opened the note and scanned it briefly. They were walking up the front steps, to the porch. Abernathy put the basket by the front door. Some sort of conveyance for the dog, it seemed a homemade contraption: a square wicker basket with leather handles, and a pillow inside. The top was a doubled layer of chicken wire that fastened snugly. “Did you make that?” Emily asked.
Abernathy looked at her as though she were daft. “Heavens no. It was in the pantry. It was the only thing I took from the house, to transport the dog.”
“Of course. Before we go in, Mrs. Abernathy, let me ask—you have keys, as do the police. Would you know, who else has keys?”
“Why, Mrs. Eicher, of course, has her keys.”
Emily caught herself. The fact that detectives were en route to effect Pierson’s arrest was not generally known, but surely, after so many weeks, Abernathy must think something amiss. Or perhaps she was invested in not thinking. “The neighbors? Mr. O’Boyle?”
“No. Mrs. Verberg said not. Mr. O’Boyle asked me for the key, on the telephone, when he called. He was very surprised Mrs. Eicher had gone, and then the children, with no mention to him, and his things, he said, are stored in the garage.”
“But you didn’t give him the key.”
She turned to look at Emily. “Mrs. Eicher did not instruct me to give anyone keys. Mr. Pierson had a key. I did not let him in.”
Emily nodded. He had Asta Eicher’s keys, of course. “I’m told you had a letter from Mrs. Eicher, saying that Pierson was coming for the children.”
Abernathy turned to unlock the door. “But not when he was coming, or what time. I could not prepare, Mrs.”
“I’m not a Mrs. actually,” Emily said, “never married. Nor a Miss—too old. I’m a journalist.”
“Yes’m.”
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