by Amy Stewart
A path had cleared between the two of them. Fleurette felt a hand on her shoulder, and then one at her elbow, perhaps to offer assistance, but she shrugged them off and hurled herself at him.
There was a bit of her oldest sister in the move. She rushed at him with all the force she could muster, and slammed a palm squarely in the middle of his chest. He did stumble around and drop his suitcase, but he did not fall and in fact regained both his footing and his composure much faster than he might have if a woman of Constance’s size and fury had thrown herself at him. He merely took a startled step back, gave a small and embarrassed laugh, and said, “I’m sorry, miss, I believe you’ve mistaken me for someone else. Are you quite sure the man you’re looking for is on this platform?”
Fleurette knew she had but a moment to hold her audience’s attention. As soon as the train rolled into the platform, she’d have to contend with passengers disembarking and boarding all at once.
“Hand it over!” she sounded, loud enough to be heard in the cheap seats. “You’re not getting on this train until I have my necklace back. You put it right in that pocket there.”
Here she poked him in the chest again. “Go ahead, then! Turn out your pockets!”
She began to rifle through his pockets herself, a move calculated to force him to respond—and he did. He took hold of her wrist, roughly, and yanked her arm up and away from him.
He was stronger than he looked. One foot left the ground entirely.
“Let go of me!” she screamed.
He dropped his bag and took hold of her with both hands. Fleurette could hear the bag fall open and wondered what sort of evidence, exactly, might be falling out onto the platform.
It was turning into a brawl, which was exactly what she wanted. As the two of them wrestled, the onlookers crowded in. Once or twice a man clamped his hand on Mr. Van Der Meer’s shoulder and mumbled something like, “There now, old fellow,” and a woman called out, “Let the girl go!” But the skirmish had not yet reached the crisis that the situation demanded.
With Mr. Van Der Meer’s hands wrapped around both of her wrists, Fleurette had but one trick left to play, and it was a risky one, being so close to the edge of the platform. They must be on the ground and in complete chaos by the time the train—bearing down now, its whistle louder—pulled in.
She had no time to waste. She kicked a leg behind his knee—his left knee, the one farthest from the platform—and down he tumbled, with her on top of him. Her elbow went right into his chest, and he coughed and gasped for air.
Fleurette’s audience was, by this time, substantial. Old men in their dark coats regarded her disapprovingly, women eyed Mr. Van Der Meer suspiciously, and a few handsome and well-dressed young men were preparing to play the part of the gentleman rescuer. But what Fleurette needed was to attract the attention of someone in a position of authority, and now she had accomplished that.
With a piercing whistle, the station agent pushed through the crowd. The train was now squealing as it shuddered to a halt. “If you’re not boarding the 9:02, clear the platform!” he shouted. When he came to Fleurette and Mr. Van Der Meer—both of them still on the ground, Fleurette’s skirt in disarray, the contents of Mr. Van Der Meer’s bags tossed around in exactly the sort of disorder a station agent despises—he looked down at both of them with contempt.
“I don’t know which one of you started it”—a lady at his elbow tried to offer an answer, but he waved her away—“but I won’t have this nonsense in my station.”
Fleurette scrambled to her feet. “He’s a thief. He was about to board the train with my valuables.”
Mr. Van Der Meer sat up, rubbing a shoulder. “I’ve no doubt the lady’s been wronged, but I’m afraid she’s mistaken. I’ve never seen her before. If you don’t mind, I’ll gather up my things and clear your platform myself.”
Passengers were by now disembarking from the train and glancing over at the scene in confusion. Among the items that had spilled from Mr. Van Der Meer’s bag in the commotion were a sort of desk diary or calendar, a cardboard folio of papers, a pair of socks rolled in a ball (they could’ve had any sort of valuable secreted within them, Fleurette thought), and a spare necktie, undone and trampled upon. He gathered these possessions up and stuffed them back into the bag as the people in Fleurette’s audience began to look nervously over their shoulders, not wanting to miss the train.
“He’s a criminal,” Fleurette said, with some urgency, to the station agent. “He goes by any number of aliases. I’m sure there’s stolen property in those bags.”
Mr. Van Der Meer, having risen unsteadily to his feet, tried one more dignified smile. “You’ve been reading too many detective stories, young lady. I hope you find the man you’re looking for. If you’ll excuse me, my train’s arrived.”
“You’re not boarding that train,” said the station agent. “I already put a call in to the police. You can both wait here and explain it to them.”
37
THE PATERSON JAIL was nothing like the Hackensack jail, where Constance had once worked and where Fleurette had, one eventful night back in 1916, sung a concert for the inmates. Hackensack’s jail had been new when then sheriff Heath took possession of it. Like any new building, it was riddled with faults: some of the drains didn’t clear, a few doors were crooked and didn’t close properly (fortunately, those were not the doors behind which inmates were locked), and the electrical lighting was unreliable.
But at least the Hackensack jail was a modern building, equipped with the essentials. It was scrubbed mercilessly every day, cleaning being a regular duty of the inmates, and it was served by an enormous boiler that kept it warm throughout the darkest and coldest months of the year.
Paterson’s old jail had nothing like that on offer. It was a frigid, Gothic structure, bereft of windows, and lacking in any sort of modern convenience. The old stone walls had been erected half a century before Fleurette was born and exuded both a permanent chill and a kind of malodorous air born of mildew, encroaching moss, and the sweat and tears of one generation of inmates after another.
Into such a forbidding institution both Fleurette and Mr. Van Der Meer had been confined, after a querulous and chaotic dust-up with the police at the train station. Mr. Van Der Meer had been taken away without fanfare, to be booked into a cell until morning, when he would be questioned and either charged or released.
Fleurette, however, posed a problem, as she knew all too well: a female inmate required special handling by a lady deputy, and the sheriff at this particular jail didn’t employ one.
She’d been placed instead in the custody of Deputy Bagby, surely the most elderly of the jail’s deputies, and perhaps, by default, the least intimidating to female inmates. He took a grandfatherly interest in her and went to great lengths to reassure her that she would be kept comfortable while the situation was sorted out.
“Sometimes the sheriff’s wife comes to sit with the ladies,” said Deputy Bagby, handing her a cup of lukewarm tea, “but she’s in the family way and confined to her bed. Then there’s a lady officer at the police department—”
Fleurette had heard of her, a policeman’s widow named Belle Headison, who saw herself more as a mother hen to wayward girls than any sort of crime-fighter.
“But we’ve sent someone over to her house and she isn’t in. Next they’ll try a nurse from the county hospital.”
Fleurette was waiting in a windowless room furnished with nothing but a wooden chair bolted to the ground on iron plates. It was damp and cold, and utterly dark, save for a little light coming from the hall, where Deputy Bagby stood.
“And if a nurse can’t be found?” asked Fleurette.
“Then you might have to stay here tonight. We can’t take you up to a cell, you see, until . . . well, ah . . .”
Fleurette knew already what he was trying to say. “Until I’ve been de-loused.”
“Are you familiar with it, miss?” asked Deputy Bagby, perhaps worried that he’d
misjudged her criminal history, or lack of one.
“I’ve only heard of it,” said Fleurette, “from reading the papers. I’ve never been arrested if that’s what you’d like to know. I’m the victim in this case, and I’d like to give my statement so the police can go to work. The man you arrested with me is a notorious swindler. I’m not the only woman he’s cheated.”
“I’m sure you’re not, miss,” said Deputy Bagby, in that disinterested voice that deputies use when they are merely marking time with an inmate. “But you weren’t brought in as a victim. You were arrested for brawling on a train platform. That’s why we need a lady officer.”
“But I am a victim, and you’ll need my statement before you decide what to do with Mr. Van Der Meer. You can’t very well turn him loose before someone talks to me. He assumes a false identity everywhere he goes. If you release him, we’ll never catch him again.”
None of this aroused in Deputy Bagby any sense of urgency. “It’ll all look different by morning,” he said distractedly, watching someone come and go at the end of the corridor out of Fleurette’s view. “It always does.”
Morning could be too late. There was a way out of this and Fleurette knew it. She had only to decide which was worse: a night in this horrid dark room, followed by the risk of Mr. Van Der Meer’s escape, or her sister’s wrath.
Another hour passed in which Deputy Bagby attended to other duties while she remained locked in the little holding room, with only a glimpse of light through a few narrow bars cut into an otherwise imposing steel door. From time to time he would return and open the door, allowing a little more light in and something like fresh air, although it only came from the corridor.
“Haven’t heard a word, miss,” he would say. “It can take a few hours for a nurse to get here. It all depends on how busy they are.”
Later, when he came back, he said, “You might be waiting until morning. I’ll ask again but it doesn’t look like anyone’s turned up.”
Then, after another interminable wait, he returned and said, “I’m off duty in a few minutes, miss. There will be a guard at the end of the hall, and he’ll hear you if you shout for him. I’m going to bring you another blanket so you can make yourself comfortable. By morning—”
But Fleurette couldn’t bear to think about morning. “My family doesn’t know where I am,” she said, having previously refused to answer any questions about whether she had any family who should be notified or questioned. “They’ll call the police themselves if I don’t turn up. Can’t you get word to them?”
“Not at this hour, miss. You should’ve said so earlier. They’ll take care of all that in the morning. Try to rest now.”
He turned to leave. She was running out of chances. If he wouldn’t telephone her family, there was still one person he might be willing to summon.
She put her face between the bars and only hoped she looked as forlorn as she felt. “Couldn’t you get word to a Paterson police officer I know? He’s an old family friend. Officer Heath? Do you know him?”
That stopped him. He turned around, opened the door again, and looked more closely at Fleurette. “I still want to call him Sheriff Heath,” he said.
“So do I,” said Fleurette. She didn’t dare to say another word, for fear of ruining her last chance.
“He’s a good man. Wasn’t too proud to come and walk a beat again. He just wants to do the job.”
Fleurette had never bothered to consider what Officer Heath wanted or didn’t want, but now she did. She supposed he was like Constance in that way: devoted to crime-fighting, as if he’d been born to it.
Perhaps that would appeal to Deputy Bagby. “He was born to law enforcement. That’s what I’ve always thought.”
He leaned in the doorway, settling in for a conversation. “How did a girl like you become acquainted with the sheriff ?”
Now she faced a quandary. Would it hurt or help her cause to invoke Constance’s name? Having no other, more convincing story close at hand, she resorted, out of desperation, to the truth. “My older sister worked for him. She was his deputy.”
Now he straightened up and leaned in to examine her more closely. “You’re one of those Kopps? Constance Kopp is your sister? You don’t look nothing like her.”
“Then you know her!”
“I know her, all right,” Deputy Bagby said. “Everybody knows her. She cost your friend Heath that election, but he wouldn’t stand for a word against her. He’d be in Congress right now, if only he hadn’t brought in a lady deputy.”
Had it been as bad as all that? Constance had her share of critics, but Fleurette had always assumed that Heath lost the election for—well, any number of reasons. There were as many reasons as there were voters. Had it really all come down to Constance? No wonder she took to her bed all that miserable winter.
But it was no time to rehash the election. She thought to appeal to his lawman’s instincts. There was such fraternity among officers, she knew that. “He’s better off in a policeman’s uniform, wouldn’t you say? He would’ve been wasting his time down in Washington.”
Deputy Bagby snorted. “I never understood why he wanted to be a congressman.”
“I think it was his wife’s idea.” Fleurette didn’t like to cast blame on Cordelia Heath—she hardly knew the woman—but she had to keep him talking.
“Could be. Now, what would he say, if I told him you were locked up here?”
“I’d be in for quite a lecture,” Fleurette said, mournfully, because it was the truth. “But he would want to be told about it. Couldn’t you telephone him?”
The deputy squinted down the hall, perhaps reading a clock, and said, “It’s just after midnight.”
“Wouldn’t you want to be called?” Fleurette implored. “If a girl who was almost like family to you landed in jail, wouldn’t you want to know?”
Deputy Bagby leaned against the doorway again, his eyes up at the ceiling, calculating. “His missus won’t like it,” he said.
“No, she doesn’t like anything to do with police work. There’s no pleasing her.”
He gave a little shrug that seemed to say, In that case . . .
“I’ll put the call through,” he said at last, “but then I’m off duty for the night. What Officer Heath does after that is his business.”
“I’ll tell him you were good to me,” she said, a little too eagerly.
“Don’t bother telling him about me,” he said, as he locked the door, leaving her once again in darkness. He looked through the narrow bars at her. “The only person he’s going to want an explanation about is you.”
38
FLEURETTE COULDN’T BE sure how much time passed after Deputy Bagby left. She didn’t sleep—how could she, with only a hard wooden chair or a cold cement floor to choose between? Instead she sat on that awful chair, her knees tucked under her chin, the blanket wrapped snugly around her to keep what little heat she could generate within, and tried to work up a palatable explanation for Officer Heath—and for Constance, whom Officer Heath would no doubt bring along.
It would help, she had to admit, if she and Constance had spoken even a word before now. Fleurette could’ve relented already and turned up for Sunday dinner to make amends. She could’ve tried to tolerate Constance’s overbearing ways: after all, hadn’t she proven to her own satisfaction that Constance had no real power over her? Fleurette was now free to live her life as she pleased, and Constance could only remark upon it from a safe distance.
Although she wasn’t really living exactly as she pleased, was she, or she wouldn’t be spending the night in the Paterson jail. Still, setting her present circumstances aside, look what she had accomplished, now that she was free from her sisters!
She had established herself at Mrs. Doyle’s and built a small but growing clientele of ladies in need of mending and alterations. She would design dresses for them, too, once they came to appreciate her work a bit more. Why, she could outfit a woman from head to toe, winter and s
ummer. Mrs. Doyle might even be persuaded to let her hold fittings in the basement. A fitting would be an occasion of sorts, a reason to put on the coffee-pot, and Mrs. Doyle liked that.
Was any of that really such an accomplishment, though, if her true aim was to get back on the stage? She’d hardly had time to think about what Alice had said about her voice. What if her singing ability really was truly and irreparably gone?
She couldn’t bear the thought. The possibility that she could damage her throat and that the damage would nestle in deep, and find permanent quarters, was simply not in keeping with her experience of her own body thus far. She had not yet reached the age when injuries became permanent, when an unreliable knee or a stiff shoulder could be expected to stay on as a long-term tenant, not a visitor who stops briefly on the front porch and moves on.
But what if Alice was right and her voice was ruined for good? What, in that case, was left for her? On what grounds had she marched out of her sisters’ house, and out of their lives, if not to follow her own grand ambitions? What were those ambitions now—a line of dresses she could sell to Paterson ladies?
There seemed, at that moment, no real point to her rift with Constance. Yes, Constance had patronized her and badgered her over her work for John Ward, but she never intended to work for him forever. She only saw it as a temporary measure, to bring in money while she waited for her voice to recover.
It wasn’t a career. It wasn’t a livelihood. It was a lark, that was all. One that had been lucrative for a while, but was never meant to last.
And what was she to say about Alice Martin, and her own involvement in Alice’s predicament? This was, of course, her more immediate concern. The man who had swindled Alice might well walk out of jail in the morning, if Officer Heath didn’t intervene.
She would have to tell all. Nothing but the entire, implausible truth would do when the moment came to state her case. Constance would be furious that she’d once again put herself in danger and tried to interfere with a known criminal when she could’ve come to either of them—Constance or Heath—for help. It had been a disservice to Alice, Constance would say, to leave her in the hands of an amateur. Alice deserved better.