Miss Kopp Investigates

by Amy Stewart

  At the library Fleurette could answer the two most pressing questions at hand: the circumstances surrounding the life and death of Alice’s putative uncle Everett, and the validity of Mr. Herman’s law practice.

  Alice made a half-hearted offer to go along, but in the same breath mentioned that Arthur would be home soon and would want his dinner, and that she’d need some time to compose herself before she saw him, or she might break down in tears and tell all.

  Fleurette suspected that a tearful confession lay in Alice’s future regardless, but she didn’t say that. Instead she said, “Go on home and let me see what I can find. If you hear from Mr. Herman, tell me about it right away.” She wrote down Mrs. Doyle’s address in Rutherford and her telephone number as if she’d lived there all her life. Had she really only just yesterday stormed out of her sisters’ house and taken up a new life under a widow’s eaves in Rutherford?

  Alice took the little scrap of paper but said, “Miss Kopp, don’t you think we might’ve worked ourselves into a state over nothing? Won’t we laugh about it when Mr. Herman returns, and the papers are signed, and you and I can go out to Long Island together, and see for ourselves that everything he promised is true?”

  “I suppose we would laugh about it,” said Fleurette, “but just now I think you ought to go home and carry on as if nothing’s happened. I’ll come to you as soon as I know something. It might be a few days. Will you be all right until then?”

  It was a strange sensation for Fleurette to be inquiring after the welfare of this older, married woman. Fleurette was the one who was accustomed to being looked after. Of the two of them, who could say that Alice was even in the worse position? All she’d lost was some money and jewelry, along with her good sense. Fleurette, on the other hand, had buried a brother, walked out on her sisters, lost her voice, and gotten herself tangled up in a lawyer’s dubious schemes. Which one of them was most in need of reassurance?

  “I’ll be fine,” said Alice. “I’ll hold my breath, and I won’t sleep, and I won’t be able to look Arthur in the eye, but I’ll be fine.”

  “Go on home, then.”

  It was by then so late in the afternoon that Fleurette had only an hour at the library, but that was all she needed. A Mrs. Peabody was dispatched to scour the obituaries and found no record of an Everett Seabury (that was the uncle’s surname, Seabury) in the New York or New Jersey index. The eager and efficient Miss Parr paged through probate notices filed in all the major papers, and likewise found no mention of either Everett Seabury or his attorney, Mr. Herman.

  Of Mr. Herman there was likewise no trace found. The state bar directories showed no such man among the membership in either New Jersey or New York. The Paterson city directory showed an attorney’s office at his address, but it didn’t belong to him. An attorney named William Griswold occupied that address.

  “Of course, the directories are out of date the minute they’re printed,” said Mrs. Peabody. “Perhaps Mr. Griswold has vacated the premises and this Mr. Herman has moved in.”

  “But we’ve no suggestion of a Louis Herman practicing law here in Paterson,” said Fleurette, “and William Griswold is registered with the state bar, and has a home address in Paterson, and in every other way looks legitimate.”

  “It would seem so,” said the librarian.

  “Then the only question is whether Mr. Herman is occupying William Griswold’s office without his knowledge,” Fleurette said.

  Miss Parr went back to her daily papers (How the entire operation reminded Fleurette of Norma! Why hadn’t Norma trained as a librarian? Couldn’t she now?) and soon had an answer. “Mr. Griswold was in the social pages just a few weeks ago,” she said. “He took a winter cruise to Cuba. He’s expected back this week.”

  “Then his office has been empty, and anyone who reads the papers would’ve known about it,” said Fleurette.

  “That’s exactly why I never talk to the papers,” sniffed Miss Parr, sounding for all the world like Norma’s long-lost twin. What a pair they would make! Fleurette found herself wondering if librarians all roomed together in some meticulous and well-ordered boarding-house, and if a place could be found for Norma in such an establishment. She came very close to asking about it when the bells chimed, signaling the library’s closing hours.

  “You’ve given me more than I could’ve hoped for,” said Fleurette, gathering up her notes.

  “Well, that’s the business we’re in,” said Mrs. Peabody.

  27

  MR. WARD JUMPED when he saw her the next morning. “Did your sister follow you? I can’t have her in here issuing threats. I have a weak chest, you know. The doctor says I mustn’t go within a hundred yards of an angry woman.”

  “Constance doesn’t know where I am anymore,” said Fleurette. “I’ve taken a room of my own, down in Rutherford.”

  “I’ve never understood the attraction of Rutherford.”

  Fleurette shrugged. “It’s just a hop into Manhattan, and I don’t run into my sisters on the street.”

  “That’s reason enough. But you know I can’t put you back to work. You Kopps are bad for business. I’m hiring another girl.”

  “Yes, I worked that one out for myself,” Fleurette said, although it stung to hear him say it. She wasn’t about to beg him for another chance, though. He wasn’t the sort of man who went in for begging. The way to handle Mr. Ward, she thought, was to meet him as an equal, to keep up the banter, and to never look desperate.

  “I only stopped in to tell you about Alice,” she said, as offhandedly as she could.

  “Alice? You’re going to have to narrow it down.”

  “Alice Martin. Your client with the husband who isn’t actually having an affair.”

  “Ah, Mrs. Martin! What a rich imagination on that one. She must get it from novels. They can ruin a girl.”

  “I believe Mrs. Martin’s being swindled. She only wanted a divorce to get her husband out of the way so she could claim an inheritance.”

  “Now, that does sound like a novel or a stage play. You should write it, Miss Kopp.”

  Fleurette forgot her troubles long enough to consider that briefly. Who did write stage plays and song lyrics? Was there money in it?

  Mr. Ward was a master of distractions, but Fleurette wasn’t going to allow it. “The inheritance is a con. A lawyer going by the name of Louis Herman has her paying all sorts of fees and taxes for the estate she’s due to inherit. But I don’t believe there’s any estate at all.”

  “Who’s the deceased?” asked Mr. Ward.

  “An uncle she never knew. I can’t find any evidence of him, either.”

  “And how did this Mr. Herman get his hooks into her?”

  “No idea. Alice doesn’t know, either. His letter came out of the blue.”

  Mr. Ward leaned back in his chair, his hands behind his head. “You’ve been playing detective. Did Mrs. Martin hire you behind my back?”

  “No one’s hired me,” said Fleurette. “Only I saw her yesterday going into Mr. Herman’s office and I listened at the door. I was just curious. It bothered me, with all the inconsistencies in her story. I thought she might be in trouble, and she is.”

  Mr. Ward grinned at her and scratched his chin. “I said I didn’t want your sister in here, but you sound just like her. She can’t resist a girl in trouble.”

  Fleurette wasn’t about to get drawn into an argument about Constance. What would it take to get out from under her shadow?

  “I only came to ask if you know the attorney whose office was being used by this shady lawyer fellow. Apparently the office belongs to a man named William Griswold. He’s been away in Cuba for a few weeks. Is there any chance he would’ve allowed his office to be used by someone else while he was away?”

  “Griswold? Not him. He’s a real stuffed shirt. Wouldn’t let another man borrow a pencil, much less his desk.”

  “I suppose I could go ask him regardless.”

  Mr. Ward shrugged. “Go ahead. You’r
e not working for me on this one.”

  “I know. You’re not going to worry about Alice Martin because she’s not paying you to worry. But . . . what would you do, if she were paying you?”

  “You aren’t thinking of hiring yourself out, are you?”

  “No,” Fleurette snapped, “I’m thinking of doing something for a woman who’s gotten herself mixed up in some sort of scheme. But I don’t know what to do, apart from telling her to go to the police.”

  “And she refuses.”

  “She does.”

  “Because she doesn’t want her husband to know.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Well, that’s the trouble,” said Mr. Ward. “The police won’t take her complaint unless Mr. Martin comes in as well. If she went to them by herself, the first thing they’d do is go around and talk to the husband and make sure the missus isn’t just hysterical. They’re not going to go running off to chase after an imaginary swindler on her word alone.”

  And how, exactly, does one chase after an imaginary swindler? Fleurette knew better than to ask.

  “Then I’ll just find out what this William Griswold has to say, and that’ll be the end of it,” she said. She rose to leave and picked up her hat.

  “Or you could let Alice worry about all that and get back to business,” Mr. Ward called as she left.

  Fleurette did not, at that moment, have any other business, but she saw no reason to tell Mr. Ward that.

  * * *

  BESIDES HAVING NO other business, Fleurette had very little to look forward to. Whatever satisfaction it might’ve given her to go storming out of the Wilkinsons’ and refusing to live under her sisters’ supervision any longer, she did find herself awfully bored at her new lodgings. Although Mrs. Doyle was everything one might hope for in a landlady—quiet, unobtrusive, timely with meals, and a decent cook—she was no conversationalist. She did not, as far as Fleurette could tell, possess any interests of her own, and as such was inept at talking to anyone else about their interests. Beyond the weather and the price of eggs, she had little to say on any subject at all.

  Likewise were the two other girls in the house placid and dull. One of them, Emily, worked for a doctor. Fleurette thought she might at least bring home a gruesome story about a man impaling himself at a rail-yard, or perhaps she might complain about a demanding patient, an intrusive mother, or a spoiled child. But there was never anything of the sort on offer. Whenever Fleurette asked her about her day, she would only give a little half-laugh and say, “Oh, about what you’d expect.”

  “I’d expect quite a lot,” Fleurette said at first, offering a few hopeful suggestions of her own. “Children swallowing pennies and unexplained rashes and tropical diseases picked up abroad.”

  “Oh goodness!” was all Emily would say. “What an imagination. Can you believe these lilies of the valley, up so early this year? And I thought it was a rather cold spring.”

  Mrs. Doyle went to great effort to keep fresh flowers in the parlor. Even when there was nothing to cut, she would bring in an arrangement of branches and moss, having instructed herself in the Japanese art of flower-arranging from a magazine article. Each new arrangement offered both Emily and Mrs. Doyle another opportunity to remark upon the weather.

  The other girl, who insisted upon being called Pinky although that couldn’t possibly have been her given name, was in training to work as a telephone operator. Surely, thought Fleurette, that would be an intriguing profession. Listening in on calls all day, patching together desperate lovers, facilitating the conduct of important business, relaying urgent medical emergencies (a situation Emily might know something about and have a shocking story to share as well). Telephone operator was a lively enough job, wasn’t it?

  But Pinky was, quite possibly, the least curious person Fleurette had ever met. “You must hear all sorts of things when they think you’re not listening” was one conversational gambit Fleurette attempted.

  “Oh, they go on and on,” said Pinky.

  “About what? Today, for instance. What was the strangest thing you heard?”

  Pinky laughed a little, as if she and Fleurette were in on a joke. “Oh, it’s just a lot of chatter. You know how people are.”

  “I don’t, really,” said Fleurette. “Not all of them, anyway.”

  “Oh goodness!” said Pinky. “Who would want to?”

  Emily and Pinky were equally uninterested in anything Fleurette got up to. Once or twice, when they happened to dawdle around the table after dinner, she would offer up some tidbit from her time on the stage.

  “In Philadelphia we were booked into a theater that had a little secret club in the basement,” she began, only to be interrupted by Emily.

  “I heard it snowed in Philadelphia this week. Isn’t that awfully late?”

  “You never can tell,” said Pinky. “Just when you think spring is here for good, and you put away your long coat—”

  “Oh, that’s always the sign that it’s going to snow, when I put away my winter coat!” said Emily. “You can count on it.”

  “Well, you’d better warn me before you do, and I’ll know to keep mine out,” said Pinky, and they both laughed at that.

  After enough of those conversations, Fleurette kept to herself. Although she was happy to be away from her sisters, and thought every day about what a relief it was to be free of their oversight, it did occur to her that Constance and Norma were, at the very least, interested in something. They held opinions, which they expressed forthrightly and argued over. Nothing of the sort happened at Mrs. Doyle’s. Fleurette came to feel that she merely existed there, but that she didn’t really live.

  When the house was empty, she and Laura practiced their singing. She worked through Mr. Martin’s exercises diligently: wa, wo, we, up and down the scale, with her larynx relaxed, or as relaxed as she could make it.

  Laura sang along flawlessly. If anything, her imitation was too good: Laura picked up on the imperfections in Fleurette’s voice, going thin and breathless on the high notes and skipping a bit when she should’ve held steady. Once or twice Fleurette dissolved into a coughing fit as she used to when she was ill, and Laura coughed alongside her, even dropping her head down the way Fleurette did.

  “You need a Victrola to sing along to,” Fleurette told her. “I don’t want you learning my ways.”

  “Sing along,” answered Laura.

  Lacking any other occupation, Fleurette resumed, half-heartedly, her seamstressing business. She spent a day going around with new cards for the shop windows, this time printed with Mrs. Doyle’s telephone number, and she picked up temporary work at a dress shop when the demand for alterations was more than the regular seamstress could handle. She also accepted Mrs. Doyle’s offer for the use of her sewing room and took on the household mending in exchange for a reduction in rent.

  And every day, without fail, she went by Market Street to see if William Griswold had returned from his cruise to Cuba.

  28

  FINALLY SHE SAW a handwritten name-plate affixed to his door. Mr. Griswold had returned. She walked into the reception room and found the tiny desk occupied by a secretary who was at that moment telephoning the engraver about a replacement name-plate.

  “Stole it right off our door,” the secretary was shouting into the receiver. “I can’t imagine what use anyone would have for it, unless the thief happens to be named William Griswold.”

  When she was finished with that business, Fleurette said, “You’ve had a robbery.”

  “Oh, if you could call it that,” said the secretary, a no-nonsense silver-haired woman. “Boys playing a prank, most likely.”

  “Is Mr. Griswold in? I’m afraid I don’t have an appointment.”

  “No one does, yet. He took a few weeks off and gave me the time away, too. What’s this about?”

  “A legal matter,” said Fleurette.

  “Well, I’d guessed that much,” said the secretary. “Never mind, go on in and tell him about it you
rself.”

  Fleurette found Mr. Griswold to be just as John Ward had described him: a stuffed shirt. He wore an immaculate suit with a perfectly folded handkerchief, a starched collar, and a watch with a chain hooked around his vest button. He carried his chin at a very particular angle. His hair bore the marks of his comb and would all day. His desk was immaculate: there would be no shuffling of papers.

  “We’re only just this morning opened for business again,” he said when he saw her.

  “I know. I’ve been waiting for you. I’ve come to tell you that someone used your office while you were away.”

  He looked up at her sharply. “What makes you say that?”

  “Because I was here, and I heard him. He removed your name-plate and replaced it with his own.”

  “Then you know who he was?”

  “The plate said Louis Herman, but I doubt that’s his real name.”

  “And why do you know so much about it, Miss . . .”

  “Kopp. I only happened to see a friend come in here, and I followed her. I never saw the man, but I heard him through the door.”

  Mr. Griswold seemed to disapprove of that. “Then you were spying.”

  “I believe my friend’s been the victim of some sort of fraud. I was hoping you could tell me about the man who was here.”

  “I can’t, and I think you must’ve been mistaken. There’s no sign of a robbery. The lock wasn’t forced. Are you sure you went to the right door? There are a few dozen attorneys in this building.”

  “But only one missing his name-plate. Would your secretary know anything about this?”

  The secretary was called in, and in fact she did know something. She had stayed in the office for a few days after Mr. Griswold sailed for Cuba, and in that time a man had come in to ask when Mr. Griswold would return, and whether she could get word to him.

  “I told him you couldn’t be reached,” she said, “and that I’d be away to visit my mother anyway, after I finished up some paperwork.”