The Shadow Palace

by Jane Steen

  “But then they must free him,” I exclaimed. “As you say, it’s not rational to do otherwise.”

  “His attorneys are requesting that he be released to the Grand Pacific Hotel, where he has rooms, even if he remains under arrest.” Mr. Salazar shrugged his shoulders. “The Gambarellis are pushing for a bond so high that even Martin couldn’t pay it, and against all reason, the judge and grand jury appear to be leaning in that direction. Which means, of course, that there’s corruption.”

  “You mean that the judge and jury have been bought?”

  “Either that or some threat has been made against them.” Mr. Salazar sighed. “This is Chicago, Mrs. Lillington. Criminals go free, and the innocent pay for crimes they didn’t commit. It happens so often that it’s considered a normal occurrence. Have you noticed how the newspapers are vague about the details of the court procedure and the indictment? They have no doubt been bought too, or they’re afraid to criticize the proceedings too openly.”

  “I had no idea that this was happening,” I whispered. “How are Martin’s spirits?”

  “Better than I’d hoped.” Mr. Salazar laid a hand briefly on my arm. “He is, in several ways, numb with the shock of it all, but he copes by concentrating on practical matters. He asked me today about—” He stopped with a quirk of the mouth that might have been a wince. “I’m sorry, that’s not a subject I should even have thought of introducing.”

  “Don’t spare me, please,” I said. “Nothing you can tell me can be worse than my imagination. And I need to know how he lives. What he eats. What he says. I torture myself hourly, picturing it all.”

  “All I can tell you is what I’ve gleaned from my visits, but yes, I understand.” I had barely noticed where Mr. Salazar had been leading me as we spoke but now found that we were in a room furnished with a grouping of chairs arranged in front of a curtain. Potted palms gave it an intimate air. Mr. Salazar motioned for me to sit down in one of the chairs and seated himself in another. For a moment, he said nothing, and I realized he was trying to bring some order to his thoughts so that he could give me the details I so desperately wanted.

  “In the county jail,” he began, “they bring all the men who have visitors into one large room and bring the visitors to the other side of the bars. So all of our conversations have taken place in public, amid the pandemonium of the visiting cell, and have consequently lacked—well, a certain depth, I suppose. But I have also spoken with his attorneys and the police detectives. I have been to speak with the Pinkerton Detective Agency to see what light they can shed on the progress of such a case and if there is anything we can do privately.” He smiled. “That’s why I haven’t been to see you, and I apologize for making you wait. I don’t want to leave Martin in the county jail for any longer than I possibly can.”

  I nodded. “I understand,” I said. “But please give me every tiny detail. It’s costing me a great deal to pretend to live my life while he’s behind bars.”

  “All right.” Mr. Salazar closed his heavy-lidded eyes and thought for a moment. “In purely practical, bodily terms, it’s not as dreadful as you’d think. Martin told me that he generally has one cellmate, but who that is changes almost daily. This, I presume, is because their cases are proceeding in the normal fashion, and they don’t have armies of lawyers to slow the process down. The food is beans and coffee.” He grinned. “I lived on a similar regime at intervals during the war. It won’t kill him, but he has asked me to bring in food when I visit. He is suffering from a lack of sleep brought about by his surroundings and, presumably, by everything that’s happened. The first question he asked me, the first time I visited him, was whether I understood there should be no visitors. That means you. He visibly relaxed when I told him that the party most anxious to contact him fully understood the situation. I didn’t tell him about your walk to the courthouse.”

  I sighed. “I admit that was stupid.” Then my mind, roving over what he had said so far, fixed on one point. “What was it that Martin wanted to know, that you thought was too delicate a matter for me?” I stared at him steadily.

  Mr. Salazar hesitated, then seemed to reach some kind of decision. “He was concerned about what was happening to Mrs. Rutherford’s . . . remains. He was almost as fixated upon that question as he was on the matter of you staying away from him.”

  That was unexpected and left an unpleasant taste in my mouth. But why should it? I asked myself. Martin had a strong sense of what was proper, and the idea of Lucetta’s body left splayed out on the floor amid her congealing blood must have been upsetting to him. And he didn’t hate her, whatever she had done to him—I knew that somehow.

  “She’s already been buried, hasn’t she?” I asked.

  “She has. Her corpse was taken to the Cook County morgue, presumably so that the police detectives could examine it again. The cause of death was clear, of course, but there might have been some indications to help with the identification of the murderer.” He frowned. “Except that the Gambarellis, by all accounts, put considerable pressure on the morgue to release her body for burial, and she has already been interred, as I gather you have read in the newspapers. The report of the forensic examination shows nothing that would not have been expected.”

  “Have you told Martin that?”

  “Martin is kept informed by his attorneys of everything the police know,” Mr. Salazar said quietly. “And of everything that is printed in the newspapers. When he was told of Mrs. Rutherford’s burial, he simply said, ‘Poor Lucetta.’”

  The pang of something like distaste went through me again. But how could I expect Martin to disregard the burial of the woman he had married? It wouldn’t have been like him. No doubt I was in the wrong, to let Martin’s words of sympathy for his dead wife irk me. But they did irk me, all the same.

  14

  Action

  After another three futile days of worrying about Martin, I sought relief in my usual remedy—practical action. After all, I reasoned, if I couldn’t control the progress of Martin’s case, I could at least control my own circumstances to a certain degree.

  It had occurred to me more than once that I was courting danger by remaining at the Palmer House. I thought I could trust Elizabeth and Mrs. Parnell to remain silent on the matter of my relationship with Martin, but what about Sarah and Tess? Inevitably, as our stay at the Palmer House lengthened, we were beginning to make acquaintances among the other guests. It was only a matter of time before the Rutherford case came up in a conversation. I was a bad dissembler myself, and Tess was worse—and it was ridiculous to expect a five-year-old child to remember what she should or shouldn’t say.

  And with so many emotions coursing through my body, I was beginning to wish I could endure my inner turmoil in a more private location. I said as much to Elizabeth.

  “So move.” Elizabeth shrugged. “Take a furnished house. You can find offers in the papers from people who are traveling and wish to rent out their house for the duration. You’ll need references, of course, but Mr. Fletcher can supply a strong one. And I daresay Mother could be prevailed upon to issue her opinion that you’re a good risk.” She grinned. “People move all the time, you know. You wait till moving day, which is the first of May. I swear a full third of Chicago’s citizens move house, like a great game of musical chairs.”

  I took her advice by spending an hour or two in the hotel’s reading room searching the personal advertisements in the papers and sent off half a dozen letters of inquiry. I received three replies. Two were clearly unsuitable, but one looked promising. I saw no harm in taking it to Mrs. Parnell since she seemed to know half of Chicago. I knew nobody else in Chicago with such an extensive circle of acquaintances—except possibly Martin.

  “Their name is Katzenmeier.” I showed Mrs. Parnell the letter, which bore an address in Aldine Square. “They say they have to spend six months in Düsseldorf and would like someone to take on not only their house, but their cook and carriage driver. Both servants are on the el
derly side and disinclined to change. I might have to hire other help for cleaning, of course.” I caught Tess looking askance at me and added hastily, “Although I could think of no better housekeeper than Tess, if that’s still her wish.”

  I had been careful to include Tess in my search for a house. Her visits to her family seemed to be settling down into a twice-weekly pattern, but she inevitably returned home in a state of discontent unusual for her. I could only imagine what Mary and Aileen might be saying about me. I had to admit the idea of enticing Tess to stay by fulfilling her long-held dream was also in my mind as I contemplated leaving the Palmer House. She would have something to do, but I would make sure her duties were not so onerous that her family could accuse me of taking advantage of her.

  Mrs. Parnell smiled at Tess and tapped the letter with a fingernail. “The Katzenmeiers are related to the Krupp family—steel, you know. The address is hardly Prairie Avenue, but in the circumstances, that might be just as well.” She then made it quite clear to what circumstances she referred by saying, “And where is little Sarah?”

  “With Alice, our femme de chambre.” I sighed. “She’ll oblige with a little minding from time to time, but I also feel the need for some sort of nursemaid-governess for Sarah.”

  It occurred to me that I was contemplating hiring rather a lot of staff all at once, but I could, after all, afford it. So I returned to the original point of our conversation by asking, “Where is Aldine Square?”

  “Off Thirty-Ninth Street, or is it Thirty-Seventh? East of the stockyards, you’ll understand, but well away from them in social terms. It’s fashionable among socially prominent people with an industrial or professional background. It’s quite new and has a pretty sort of park in the middle.”

  “Yes, they say so in their letter.” I indicated the place with my finger. “I thought it would be excellent for Sarah, particularly if we had someone to take her there every day, even if Tess and I are busy.” At what I could possibly be busy was beyond me at that moment, but I was going to have to do something other than moon about over Martin or I’d go mad.

  “The Katzenmeiers say they will include the use of the carriage in the rent, but they’ve named no figure. Should I go prepared to make an offer? And what should it be?”

  Mrs. Parnell tilted her head to one side, thinking. “Land prices have fallen shockingly in Chicago since the Panic of ’73. They’re still falling, and it can be very hard to find good tenants for any house over one hundred dollars a month. For a fashionable address, they’ll be hoping to get over two hundred a month. So I suggest you offer them one hundred and ninety with the carriage thrown in. You’ll have to pay for servants, food, fuel, and all the rest of it, but I doubt you’ll come out worse than staying at the Palmer House—and you’ll have far more room. I personally find a hotel more convenient, but then our family has dwindled to so small a number and will no doubt soon dwindle some more.”

  She gave Elizabeth a hopeful glance, to which Elizabeth returned an innocent, wide-eyed blue stare. She had hinted to me that her campaign to seduce Mr. Fletcher was ongoing, but she had not yet achieved success. Of course, success would be hard to achieve under her mother’s watchful eye, and I wondered exactly what Elizabeth was up to.

  I had come to a decision. “I’ll write back to the Katzenmeiers today, asking to see the house. And I’ve already asked Alice about reputable agencies for finding the right sort of woman for Sarah. She recommended one agency in particular, and I intend to write to them too.”

  It was surprising how easily matters fell into place once I took action. All three of us liked the house at Aldine Square. Although I fretted inwardly that it was so far away from Martin, I knew I had made a sound decision based on rationality rather than emotion. I shook the hands of Mr. and Mrs. Katzenmeier over a small glass of celebratory cordial while Tess and Sarah explored the park. We settled on two hundred and seven dollars and eighty cents a month, all-inclusive, with a gardener thrown in.

  I thus took possession, figuratively speaking, of an Irish cook named Mrs. Abigail Power. Her dried-up appearance, with her black dress hanging off her bony shoulders, did not bespeak a great interest in food. Still, her pantry was immaculate, and what food she presented to me as evidence of her skill seemed well cooked. The Katzenmeiers introduced me to their—temporarily my—carriage driver, an elderly man called Arthur Nutt, whom the Katzenmeiers assured me had the strength of a young man when it came to his job.

  And then I had a tremendous stroke of luck. Upon hearing of our plans to move, Alice, our femme de chambre, immediately offered herself as my lady’s maid and a sort of assistant housekeeper for Tess. This would, as she pointed out, allow Tess to visit her family without throwing the management of the house into disorder. She promised to help me find a young and inexpensive maid-of-all-work to do any cleaning or other tasks that didn’t fall under the purview of the other staff.

  “It’s a good thing Alice will be there to help me,” said Tess, who had clearly not thought through the implications of taking on a job that usually required a near-constant presence in the house. “Mary says I should go stay with them for a while, to see how nice it is to be a family again.”

  I bit my lip. I was rather tired of hearing “Mary says.” Moreover, this phrase was often followed by “Aileen says.” What Aileen had to say was mostly on the theme of Tess receiving instruction from their parish priest. Mrs. O’Dugan was reportedly racked with guilt at having allowed Tess to be steered away from the Holy Roman Church. She would burst into tears on a regular basis and cry to heaven to bring Tess back into the fold, a performance that impressed Tess tremendously.

  Personally, it didn’t much bother me whether Tess was Catholic or Protestant except that this seemed to be another ploy to drive a wedge between me and Tess. The worst thing was that I sympathized with them to a certain degree. Perhaps they were, after all, just trying to give Tess that sense of belonging she so clearly craved.

  On the other matter that kept me mercifully busy, I did not have the success that I’d had with Aldine Square. Sarah made it quite clear that she didn’t like a single one of the candidates I interviewed for the post of nursemaid-governess, and there had been several. I gained the impression that times were even harder than I’d realized. The prospect of working for a widow with just one child, at the rate of pay suggested by the agency, was plainly an enticing one. I even went so far as to suspect the agency of suggesting overly generous wages. I was sure they realized I was without experience in the matter of domestics.

  Without any helpful sign from Sarah, I had to rely entirely on my instincts. I chose an Englishwoman called Miss Patricia Baker. She was young—around my age—and able to talk intelligently on a wide variety of subjects. Her youth recommended itself to me, in light of the number of middle-aged women with very decided views I saw. I didn’t want to end up being dominated by the hired help. And I thought it would be more amusing for Sarah to be with someone the same age as her mother. Besides, I could never resist an English accent. I was sure Sarah would grow to like Miss Baker over time.

  With these arrangements completed, I allowed myself to feel that I had done my best for my small family in terms of settling down into our new life in Chicago. All I had to do was get my family to agree with me on that point.

  15

  Struggle

  Given the care shown by Mr. Salazar not to be seen with me, it was hard to get the firsthand news of Martin that I craved. The secondhand news reported by the newspapers was not encouraging, and I suspected it was highly biased against Martin. Two long articles in particular suggested a certain lack of impartiality. One was headlined “A Father’s Grief” and described a broken-hearted Domenico Gambarelli at his daughter’s funeral. The other depicted Lucetta’s death in grisly detail and painted a nasty picture of Martin rising to his feet, his hands dripping blood.

  I mentioned those pieces to Mr. Salazar when we at last met again. He eventually took the enormous risk of visitin
g me in our rooms at the Palmer House at eight o’clock in the evening.

  “We believe the journalists have been bought,” was his response. “Every article of that sort that they print makes it harder for us to have Martin released. And yet it’s perfectly clear to the police by now that Martin could not have done the deed. When our attorneys protest, the Gambarellis’ representatives claim that Martin could have had his wife killed by someone else. They claim he deliberately went up to the storeroom to raise the alarm and act the part of the grieving husband. It’s pure conjecture without a shred of evidence. Yet somehow the judge has found a hundred different ways of using such arguments—and others—to prevent Martin’s release. We’re bringing a writ of habeas corpus, but my guess is that we could again be beaten back by the judge’s procedural delays.”

  “And if they find out about me, that would give them even more ammunition to use against Martin.”

  Mr. Salazar nodded. “As you say.”

  “I’m moving into a house on Aldine Square—here’s my new address.” I held out a piece of folded paper. “Not, of course, that it would be hard to track you there if anyone’s watching, but it’s a little less public than the Palmer House.”

  “Thank you.” Mr. Salazar copied the address into a small notebook he kept in an inner pocket.