by Amy Stewart
“Then he knew the office would be empty,” said Mr. Griswold, sounding put out about it.
“Anyone would know,” said Fleurette. “There was a notice in the paper.”
“That’s the last time I’ll do anything of that sort. But we still don’t know how he got inside.”
Fleurette went over to the door and peered through the key-hole. In her stage days, she’d toured with a girl who could get into any trunk, locked drawer, or hotel room she liked. All it took was a hairpin and a good ear.
“That would’ve been the easy part,” she said. “The brass plate was the giveaway. I’m surprised your neighbors didn’t notice, or any of your clients who happened to pass by.”
“Even if they had, there was no way to reach either of us,” said Mr. Griswold, “and it would’ve been too small a matter to take to the police. Anyone might assume I’d simply moved offices.”
“And you found nothing unusual when you returned?” asked Fleurette. “An unfamiliar brand of cigarette in the ash-tray, a note in the wastebasket, nothing at all?”
This was too much for Mr. Griswold. “If I wanted the police here looking for evidence, I’d call them. I’m sorry, Miss . . .”
“Kopp.”
“Miss Kopp, but I don’t see how this has anything more to do with you. Please express our regrets to your friend. I trust she’s come to no harm. You’ve told us what you know, and I’ll handle it from here.”
Fleurette was peering under his desk while he spoke. “Is that a café you frequent?” she asked, reaching for a match-book.
“Didn’t I just tell you we’d sort this out on our own?”
“The Black Cat,” Fleurette said, turning the match-book over. “It’s just over on Pearl Street. Doesn’t sound familiar?”
“No,” Mr. Griswold admitted.
Fleurette glanced over at the secretary, who likewise shook her head. She tossed the match-book on his desk. “This man who stopped in—what do you remember about him?”
Before Mr. Griswold could stop her, the secretary answered. “He was perfectly ordinary. Medium height, brown hair, light complexion, a black coat with perhaps a dark blue suit underneath.”
“Nothing to distinguish him at all?” asked Fleurette. “A beaky nose, a lazy eye, an unfortunate mole with a whisker sprouting from it?”
“I’m afraid not.”
Fleurette had not, of course, seen the man in question, and Alice’s description had been equally useless. It occurred to her that it must be a good quality in a con man to look like everyone and no one at all.
Mr. Griswold had had enough of Fleurette’s questions. “It’s been a delight, Miss Kopp, but our visit is at an end.” He said it so officiously that Fleurette thought it best not to press her luck.
“Put a new lock on that door,” she said, and then she was gone.
* * *
THE MATCH-BOOK WAS but a slim lead, but she thought she ought to take an excursion over to Pearl Street anyway. The Black Cat, Fleurette realized, had been there for years, under a different name. It had formerly stood as Miss Emeline’s Tea House, and had been, as Fleurette recalled, a dull and musty place even as far back as when tea houses were popular. Either Miss Emeline had come to her senses, or she’d sold the place to a more savvy operator, because the Black Cat was as thoroughly modern a place as one might hope to find in Paterson, with checked tablecloths in the French style, a polished black counter, and paintings (as one might expect) of black cats in Parisian settings. All was designed to appeal to the returning soldier. It must’ve worked, because men and women equally partook of the omelets, poulet en casserole Parisienne, and the potato soufflés.
With only a vague description of an ordinary-looking man and a name that was most likely false, Fleurette’s inquiries led nowhere. “That sounds like half the men who come in here,” said the waitress. “Look around. Would you remember a fellow like that?”
“Of course not,” said Fleurette, and wandered out, entirely at a loss.
She stood across from the Black Cat and scrutinized it, as if she might read in the brickwork a story about a man pretending to be an attorney peddling false stories about inheritances. But no new information emerged from the squat little building.
Under its striped awning the lights from inside had begun to glow as the sky above it darkened. It seemed a cheerful place, optimistic about the coming decade, free of the worries brought on by war and want. On either side of it loomed hulking old brick buildings that housed decrepit apartments upstairs and a hodge-podge of tiny businesses on the ground floor: a watch repair shop, an upholsterer, a fortune-teller, and a Japanese novelty shop. From upstairs came the stench of something vinegary brought to a boil and a baby’s wail.
If Louis Herman had been there, he hadn’t left a trace.
29
JUST AS FLEURETTE pursued Louis Herman, Constance pursued the bank manager, with better results.
She stopped by in the morning, on her way to work, and surveyed the place. It was a small bank, employing only three tellers, with Mr. Tichborne, the bank manager, tucked away in a corner office behind an elaborately carved door that looked as impenetrable as the door to the vault itself.
Seated outside the office was his secretary, a woman of middle years who seemed to manage everything that went on in the building. She answered the telephone, fielded questions from the tellers, managed an appointment diary, and juggled towering stacks of files and ledger books.
MRS. WALLACE, her name-plate read. Constance suspected that nothing went on at the bank that escaped Mrs. Wallace’s attention.
She further guessed that Mr. Tichborne took a long and leisurely lunch every afternoon, as a bank manager would, but that Mrs. Wallace ate a sandwich at her desk and never stopped working.
Her guesswork was proven correct when she returned at lunch to find Mr. Tichborne away and Mrs. Wallace polishing an apple.
“He’ll be back by two because he has an appointment then,” said Mrs. Wallace, “but after that he hasn’t so much as ten minutes to spare for the rest of the day.” She pointed to her notes in the appointment diary, an efficient and neatly printed list of names and times.
“I don’t suppose he’ll have an answer for me anyway,” said Constance. “What I need would require a great deal of digging around in files, but he told my sister that the files were a mess and nothing could be found in them if he tried.”
Mrs. Wallace slammed her apple down on the desk as a judge would a gavel and rose to her feet. “He wouldn’t dare! I keep these files in perfect order. He never touches them.”
“I found it hard to believe myself,” said Constance. “We’re only trying to reconcile the bank statements since my brother died. His widow’s in no condition to do it herself.”
“I’m sure she’s not,” said Mrs. Wallace. “After my husband died, I could hardly put one foot in front of the other.”
“Then you know,” Constance said.
“Oh, of course I know. Mr. Tichborne only hired me because he and my husband were old friends. But if it wasn’t for that, he would’ve fired me in the first week. It took so long for me to even be able to think clearly.”
“Our Bessie’s going through the same, only she’s expecting their third child, too.”
“Poor dear. I remember that name. She was here recently, wasn’t she? With another of your sisters?”
“She was,” said Constance. “I wish she’d spoken to you instead of Mr. Tichborne.”
Mrs. Wallace was already reaching for her ledgers. “What’s the name?”
“Francis Kopp. We’re only looking for a list of debits and credits. I believe it’s July we’re missing, or August.”
After a few minutes the ledger was found, and Constance and Mrs. Wallace leaned over it together. “Tell me what you need and I’ll copy it down for you,” Mrs. Wallace said.
Constance ran her finger down the column of figures. The number jumped out plainly enough.
Fifteen hundred
dollars, paid to Mr. Griggs, Francis’s employer.
“Oh yes, I remember this,” said Mrs. Wallace. “That was when your brother bought a share of his employer’s business. They signed the papers in Mr. Tichborne’s office. It must’ve been quite a celebration at home.”
“It certainly was,” said Constance, “and that solves the riddle. I can make the books balance now.”
“There, you see? Nothing to it. I don’t know why Mr. Tichborne has to make everything more complicated than it really is.”
“It’s only complicated for him,” said Constance, smiling down at her. “You have it all perfectly in hand.”
“Indeed, I do.”
* * *
A SHARE OF HIS employer’s business! Mr. Griggs had been to pay his condolences, but hadn’t said a word about it.
“Not that we gave him much of an opportunity,” said Bessie, ever the peacemaker.
Norma insisted on going over to confront Mr. Griggs the very next day. She was as strategic about it as a war general, announcing that they would arrive early enough to ambush him first thing in the morning. “We want to catch him unawares, before he barricades himself in some back office. Francis was at his desk by seven-thirty. We’ll go at seven.”
Bessie, sensing the possibility of a lengthy siege, packed sandwiches. She was no longer so sick in the morning and instead preferred not to be more than about three feet away from her next meal.
Their strategy was rewarded: just after eight, as they waited under an awning over the loading dock, Mr. Griggs arrived in his automobile.
“It’s about time you turned up,” Norma called as he was stepping out. “Isn’t the boss supposed to be the first man in?”
Mr. Griggs turned around, a bit startled to have a woman telling him his business at that hour. “Miss Kopp. Ah, and Mrs. Kopp. I want you to know once again that on behalf of the entire firm—”
“That’s all well and good,” said Norma, “but we’ve been to the bank, and they had quite a surprise for us. You must’ve wondered why it took us so long to come and see about our interest in this affair.”
Mr. Griggs looked as though they’d just handed him a rotten fish. They were still outside, in the gravel lot where the delivery trucks came and went, back when there were deliveries to be made. The business was situated in a district of similar operations, all red brick and low-slung and a bit dismal. It was a chilly morning, with a little wind and a few splatters of rain. Bessie kept tugging at the scarf she wore over her head.
“Ladies,” he said, seeing no alternative, “please don’t stand out here in the wet. Come inside, and tell me what I can do for you.”
“I intend to tell you exactly what you can do,” said Norma, who was all too happy to step inside and get to her business. The two of them followed Mr. Griggs and found themselves in the administrative end of an enormous warehouse.
Norma had never in her life run any sort of packing and shipping facility, but she could see at once that this was not the way to do it. Although there were enormous old wooden shelves lining the walls of the warehouse, and a few more in rows near the back, there was nothing on them but dust. What remained of the business’s stock—brittle, yellowed old baskets in a motley assortment of styles that had once been popular but were no longer—was simply tossed about on the floor, neither stacked nor grouped according to any system that might, to Norma’s methodical mind, have made any kind of sense: not by height nor width nor purpose nor color nor style of decoration. Some were broken or frayed at the handles. The damaged inventory was simply mixed in with what little was in salable condition.
A dozen or so work-tables, of standing height, were buried under precisely the sort of clutter Norma could not abide: the kind that had no discernible pattern or reason to it. Bits of fabric, used for lining baskets, were mixed indiscriminately with unopened mail, half-typed invoices, dried glue-pots, shipping twine, and—most horribly—empty boxes of a particular type of salted soda cracker that Francis had loved. Bessie gave a little start at the familiar green and white packages, remembering the way he’d left those boxes tossed around at home.
The place was so dimly lit as to make it nearly impossible to do any sort of work, the only light coming in from the high and distant windows and a few electrical bulbs strung not across any area where a person might work, but seemingly at random, perhaps illuminating work-benches that had once stood there but had since been moved or (Norma suspected) simply allowed to crumble and be swept up in the detritus.
There were but two people working in the enormous, shambling operation, both of whom had attended Francis’s funeral: an elderly clerk named Mr. Hastings, and a young man named Thomas Wells, whose duties consisted, as far as Norma knew, of driving the delivery truck, sorting the merchandise and handling the packages, and any sort of heavy lifting that Francis didn’t wish to do himself. Francis had been in charge of most other operations: sales, purchasing, negotiations with vendors, and so on.
Bessie went to speak to Mr. Hastings and then to Thomas Wells, both long-time acquaintances, but Norma stood back, her arms folded across her chest.
“It isn’t much of an operation,” she said to Mr. Griggs.
“Well, it’s a bit quiet now, but if you’d been here before the war—”
“What it used to be is of no interest. We own a portion of what we see before us. It’s half, as I recall.” In fact, Norma had no idea what sort of interest Francis owned, but thought she’d start high and let Mr. Griggs correct her.
“One-quarter,” said Mr. Griggs, and then hesitated to say more.
“Do you keep an office here, or do you merely take a seat amid the piles of rubble?”
Bessie returned to them just then, wearing a strained and worried expression.
“This way, ladies,” said Mr. Griggs, escorting them to a little room in the corner knocked together with wood panels.
Inside there was at last some sense of order: two leather chairs, worn but serviceable, a desk under the window with pigeon-holes labeled in a manner that at least made sense for an operation of this sort (BILLS OF LADING, CUSTOMS, PAYABLES, RECEIVABLES, and the always-overflowing MISCELLANY), and a bookshelf stacked with a decade’s worth of ledgers, catalogs, and merchant directories.
“We were surprised to hear from the bank,” Norma said, before any of them had taken a seat. “The mortgage came as quite a shock, but we were relieved to hear that we owned an interest in a business to make up for it. A quarter interest,” she said, raising an eyebrow at Bessie who nodded grimly and dropped into the nearest chair.
“Then Francis never told you,” said Mr. Griggs.
“I’m afraid not,” said Bessie, “but we are here today to learn all that we can.”
“That’s the right spirit,” said Mr. Griggs. “Now, as to the prospects going forward, we feel certain that with the war over and business operations returning to normal—”
“Why don’t we save the future prospects for the future, and have you tell us what, exactly, led Francis to mortgage his family’s home? What sort of business opportunity presented itself last summer, while the fighting in France was at its worst, that proved irresistible to my brother?” Norma asked.
Mr. Griggs looked helplessly between the two of them. “It wasn’t so much the opportunity as the lack of it,” he said. “We weren’t the only business to find itself in an impossible position. We could hold on, with the certainty that better days would return, or close our doors forever and let some other competitor take the lead when things turned around.”
“Then you asked Francis to put in money to keep the doors open,” said Bessie. Her hand rested absently on her belly. Mr. Griggs tried not to look.
“It was only temporary,” he said, “until the war came to an end, as you suggested.”
“And was he being paid according to any schedule?” asked Norma.
“Paid? Surely you know he received his salary.”
“No, paid something for his interest in the
operation.”
“Well, that’s just it,” said Mr. Griggs. “There was so little coming in, and only expenses going out.”
“Expenses,” said Norma. “Purchasing new baskets and so forth.”
“Well! There was nothing to purchase, don’t you see? We had no ships coming from China, not during the war.”
“Then by expenses, you refer to salaries,” said Norma.
“Yes, exactly,” said Mr. Griggs, relieved to have made his point at last.
Now it was Bessie who leaned forward to drive home the final point. “Are you asking us to believe,” she said, “that my husband mortgaged his house, handed the proceeds over to you, and that you then handed the money back to him in the form of his own salary?”
Mr. Griggs, abashed and flustered, attempted to dig himself out of that particular hole. “I wouldn’t put it quite like that. There was his quarter interest, too. I handed over a sizable portion of the operation to him. It was worth quite a bit more than that, in better times.”
“But it isn’t now,” said Norma.
“Well,” said Mr. Griggs. There was no advantage in him offering any more information than what Norma was able to deduce for herself.
“I suppose we could inspect the books,” said Norma, “considering we own a quarter interest.”
“Oh, it’s an awful lot to explain,” said Mr. Griggs, unwisely, having no idea who he was up against. “Just columns and columns of figures. If you wanted to know anything in particular, I’d be happy to answer—”
“I believe we will have a look at the books,” said Norma, “but there is also the matter of the warehouse. It must be worth something. It sits on such a good plot of land.” Norma had already cast her appraiser’s eye over the boundaries of the property and calculated what it might fetch, as compared to the acreage out in Wyckoff she was parceling out.
“Well, then it’s a pity that we rent,” said Mr. Griggs, earning an astonished expression from both women.