The Shadow Palace

by Jane Steen

  I was becoming accustomed to life at Gambarelli’s, from the whirl of activity when the store was crowded with customers to the periods of boredom and endless tidying and arranging when it wasn’t. Mrs. Crowford and the millinery assistants gradually allowed me greater freedom to make recommendations and suggestions to customers. When we were busy, I was able to make some sales on commission. I would feign delight in those few cents and buy such small supplies and gewgaws as a young woman with not much thought for the future—except for the exciting possibility of finding a husband—might wish for.

  I missed Sarah and Tess, and my mind was far too often on Martin, but I also found myself longing for my dressmaking business. I used my increasing influence over customers to make recommendations on their entire ensemble. If I had a few minutes to spare, I would wander through the dress goods department, familiarizing myself with Gambarelli’s stock of wools and linens, silks and satins.

  Today had been busy, and at four o’clock in the afternoon, we were all taking advantage of a slower period to put our counter in order. I had one of the ribbon drawers open and was checking through and straightening the spools of bright color, my lower back complaining about the position in which I was standing. Miss Green quietly said, “Crowford” and I felt rather than saw the activity around me increase in pace and intensity.

  “Is Mr. Gorton on the floor?” Mrs. Crowford hove into view with the speed of an arriving locomotive. She was a brisk, dried-up woman who did not hold with vague answers or slowness and rarely bothered to greet her subordinates. I rather liked her directness and her meticulous attention to detail. I particularly admired her utter recall of the day’s, week’s, even month’s business.

  “I haven’t seen Mr. Gorton, ma’am.” Miss Dowling widened her watery blue eyes into an expression of keen alertness, as if she hadn’t been gossiping in an undertone with Miss Green for the last twenty minutes. “He hasn’t been on the floor today.”

  Mrs. Crowford tutted. “I suppose I’d better take this up to his office.” She put the accordion folder she carried on the counter and steadied it with her right hand while she flipped up the watch pinned to her bodice with the other.

  “I could go,” I offered. “I’m due to take my twenty minutes.” I had made quite a specialty of offering to fetch and carry. Such tasks gave me opportunities to walk around the store and keep my eyes and ears open—so far, with little result.

  “Yes, very well.” Mrs. Crowford put the folder—which turned out to be remarkably heavy—into my arms. “Tell him it’s the orders he was asking about, only he’ll have to get one of his clerks to make the précis. I haven’t had the time.”

  “Will it be all right if I wait five minutes until Miss Sweeny gets back?” I asked and received a nod in return as Mrs. Crowford departed in the direction of the glove counter.

  “She did that on purpose,” Miss Dowling said as soon as Mrs. Crowford was out of earshot. “She knew you’d offer, so you can get into hot water with Mr. Gorton instead of her. He won’t be too pleased to hear there’s no précis.”

  I shrugged. “I’ll manage. Will he shout at me?” I grinned at her.

  “Not him. Freeze you, more like. Finish your ribbons, quick. You can take an extra ten minutes since you’re running an errand.”

  Five minutes later, I made my way up the staff staircase to the offices on the building’s fifth floor. By the time I reached the top, I was panting. Shopgirls were not permitted to use the elevators, and the folder grew heavier with every flight of steps I climbed.

  I knew vaguely where the managers’ offices were, but it took me a few moments to find the door with “F. Gorton” painted on it. I knocked.

  “Yes.” The voice sounded impatient.

  Balancing the folder on one arm, I opened the door.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you, Mr. Gorton.” Then, realizing he wasn’t alone, I affected dismay. “I’m terribly sorry, sir. I would have waited if I’d known you had a visitor.”

  My heart began to beat more rapidly. The visitor was the man called Christopher Columbus Crabb, and the light of recognition was in his eyes. I had at last stumbled upon something, but I had a part to play.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to come back later?” I sincerely hoped not, but I didn’t want to seem eager. I gave Mr. Crabb a smile that I hoped walked the line between flirtatiousness and the professional friendliness of a saleswoman and said, “It’s good to see you again, sir.”

  Gorton waved me into the room with a brusque gesture. “We are nearly finished, and I go out soon. Tell me what it is.”

  I proffered the folder I was carrying. “Mrs. Crowford asked me to bring you this. She sends her compliments and says she hasn’t had time to make a précis.”

  A frown of annoyance marred Gorton’s handsome face. Seen up close, his head, with its mass of black hair, looked a little large for his slender, elegant body. He wore a morning coat of the finest cut. His silk cravat sported a large diamond pin that reflected sparks from the gaslight.

  “No précis.” He began pulling papers out of the folder and replacing them after a brief examination, muttering in French under his breath in a way that boded ill for Mrs. Crowford. All I could do was stand and watch. He seemed to have completely forgotten my presence.

  Crabb hadn’t. He lounged back in his chair, stretched his legs out in front of him, tipped his curly brimmed bowler hat forward, and looked at me from under it in an impertinent manner.

  “Are you really a shopgirl?” he asked after a few minutes’ perusal. “You don’t look like the kind of girl who’d be desperate to work at Gambarelli’s.” He brushed his mustache with one gloved hand in a manner that was somehow suggestive. “You look like you’re destined for better things than that.”

  I tried to sound a little put out. “I’m a dressmaker by profession, but it’s not easy to find a job when you’re new to a town and don’t know anyone.”

  “I could introduce you to people.” One side of Crabb’s beautifully shaped mouth curled up under the fringe of his mustache. I realized he reminded me of my cousin Jack. “There are far better ways to make a living in Chicago than standing behind a counter.”

  “Don’t tease the girl, Crabb.” Mr. Gorton was making rapid notes on a sheet of paper.

  “Does he mean something that’s not respectable?” I asked, appealing to the Frenchman. “I hope you won’t think I’d listen to him, sir.”

  “He is a young ass,” said Mr. Gorton distinctly, making the sibilants hiss. He looked directly at Crabb, his eyes shaded by their thick lashes. “I don’t know how things are at Field and Leiter’s, Crabb, but in this store, the young women are not to be insulted by such insinuations.”

  “No insult intended,” Crabb said smoothly.

  Mr. Gorton had finished extracting what he wanted from the folder and handed it back to me. “Please return this to Mrs. Crowford, with my compliments. And kindly remind her, from me, that I require a précis next time, or we will have words.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said meekly, all the while trying to reformulate Mr. Gorton’s words into something less likely to make Mrs. Crowford lose her temper with me.

  “Thank you, Miss—”

  “Harvey.”

  “’Arvey. You may go. Crabb, you too must leave—I have to see Mr. Alessandro.”

  Mr. Crabb rose promptly and gracefully to his feet and held the door open for me with an ironic bow. I heard him shut it behind me as I headed for the staircase. Then my progress was arrested by a strong hand grasping the back of my arm.

  “There’s much more money to be had than in working in a place like this,” said Crabb softly in my ear. “The name’s Christopher Columbus Crabb. You can wait for me outside the employee entrance at Field’s, any evening at seven. Don’t make it too obvious.”

  His grip loosened a little, and I pulled away. “I’m not what you take me for.”

  “They never are until they’re short of cash.”

  My retre
at toward the stairs was followed by a low chuckle, barely audible under the sound of my hastening footsteps.

  “You’d be a complete fool to get mixed up with Crabb,” I muttered to myself later that day as I headed north on State Street. I had been assigned to the early dinner shift this week and had eaten fast, obtaining leave to absent myself for an extra forty-five minutes. I intended to purchase bonbons, to ingratiate myself with the gossipy sales clerks—both men and women—from the dress goods department. I was glad enough of the small taste of freedom this errand gave me and had even found time to change my work dress for one I’d made myself.

  I was fairly sure that Crabb meant absolutely what I thought he meant. He had inferred that the way to make money in Chicago was by engaging in the sort of life that Lizzie Allen led, or worse. I’d been at Gambarelli’s long enough to realize that some of the girls managed to get around the limitations of what could be earned by selling goods in the store by ensuring that they had at least one man on the string.

  These men did not usually work at Gambarelli’s. The hours at the store were too long and the pace of work too intense for male and female sales clerks to form romantic attachments. Besides, most of the girls affected to despise the idea of marrying a sales clerk. There were flirtations, to be sure, and I knew one or two young women who seemed genuinely stricken with romantic love. They would blush when a certain young man from umbrellas or shoes strolled by their counter—Miss Green was one. But most of them were being courted, if that were the word, by men outside the store.

  So I wasn’t the only shopgirl at Gambarelli’s who shot away from the store like an arrow from the bow as soon as the Sunday service was over. In fact, my rapid exit—in the direction of the quiet street where Arthur Nutt sat waiting for me atop the rockaway—was clearly taken to mean that I had a lover. I realized after a while that even had I been seen climbing into the carriage, many of the girls wouldn’t have batted an eyelid. Miss Sweeny sympathized when Miss Dowling sighed after a life of wedded bliss with a respectable husband and eyed every prosperous-looking male customer with an avid eye, but the gentleman who waited for her outside the employee entrance every week had the aura of being married—to someone else. I also suspected some of the girls of working at a certain establishment any evening they could sneak out of the store.

  So Crabb’s hints were rather less of a surprise than I’d pretended. And if he were indeed engaging in espionage of some sort, he might be a useful acquaintance to cultivate. Yet to do so could lead me down a path I definitely didn’t want to take.

  The confectioner’s shop I sought was just north of Madison Street, not far from Field and Leiter’s. I had already crossed to the eastern side of the street, but as I drew opposite Rutherford’s, my footsteps faltered, as they always did.

  I instinctively hesitated to venture into Martin’s store as Amelia Harvey. Despite his release, a small but persistent group of journalists haunted the corner of State and Madison, watching for any sign of Martin’s comings and goings or any hint of something new. And I knew intuitively that Martin would avoid being seen openly with me until the real killer had been found—and possibly even beyond that.

  As I watched from across the street, there was a general movement of the newspaper men toward a dappled gray horse, riderless, that had been led to a convenient spot on State Street near the Rutherford’s entrance. My eyesight was keen enough at a distance that I could see the journalists had an unhurried air, but it was an expectant one.

  And then Martin emerged. I couldn’t mistake him—his hair always gave him away. Besides, I would have known him anywhere. He wore a frock coat and tall silk hat, the very picture of a prosperous gentleman. I wasn’t surprised to see him head straight toward the gray horse. Passing carriages occasionally impeded my view, but I could see that a gaggle of passersby had joined the journalists who gathered around him. I could hear nothing above the din of the street, but I realized I was witnessing an ordeal that Martin went through more than once a day.

  I saw him urge the horse into a fast trot as he headed along Madison Street away from me. He was no doubt returning to the Grand Pacific, with his day at the store ended. Or perhaps he had planned a longer ride to exercise his muscles and remove him, for a while, from the attention of the curious. Perhaps he even had a social engagement, a dinner with a friend to look forward to.

  I stood watching until I could no longer see him amid the carriages and horse cars. A feeling of utter blackness descended upon me.

  Whatever he was doing, I wasn’t part of it. I might never be part of it. This was Martin’s normal life, or as close to it as he could get, and I was as removed from it as if I’d still been in Kansas. I didn’t even know if our remoteness from one another mattered as much to Martin as it did to me. I was an onlooker from afar, more so now than when we’d been hundreds of miles apart but connected by our letters.

  Suddenly, my scruples about talking with Crabb fell to the wayside. What did any kind of risk to myself matter if it would lead to the discovery of Lucetta’s killer? I was sure I could talk myself out of any situation that would involve sacrificing my virtue or putting myself into direct physical harm. If I could help Martin in any way, I should.

  It was time to act. I unbuttoned the top of my paletot and fumbled for the timepiece pinned to the bodice of my dress. Twenty minutes to seven. Crabb had told me I could wait for him outside Field and Leiter’s at seven. I would still have just enough time to buy the bonbons that were the ostensible reason for my outing on my way there.

  I turned away from the street corner and plunged back into the stream of pedestrians. The street was quieter now that the dinner hour had come and gone, but it was still crowded, and I would have to hurry if I wanted to be absolutely sure of Crabb.

  “Yes, I’d be a fool to get mixed up with that man,” I said under my breath, lengthening my stride as much as my skirts would allow. “But I’d be more of a fool to let this opportunity slip by. After all, it’s the first one I’ve had.”

  Five minutes to seven found me waiting outside Field and Leiter’s, my eyes on the side entrance from which employees were emerging. The store was a huge, imposing block, more massive than either Gambarelli’s, with its disjointed facade made out of several buildings, or Rutherford’s neat, contained exterior. It had row after row of arched windows separated by cornices of a darker color. The light of the setting sun made the pale stone at the top of the building gleam. At street level, it was already almost dark, the passersby illuminated by pools and splashes of light from windows and streetlamps.

  It seemed like an age before I saw Crabb emerge. I recognized him easily by his tall, broad-shouldered form and the curly brimmed hat of the sort affected by mashers and vain young men. I was glad to see he was heading in my direction so I wouldn’t have to run after him.

  “Mr. Crabb.” I stepped into his path.

  Even in the gathering gloom, I could see the amusement in his eyes and mouth, but all he said was, “Well, then.” He doffed his hat to me and offered me his arm. I took it. It was hard with muscle, the forearm broad and strong, and this close to me, he seemed even more imposing. He smelt of cologne.

  “Come and have a drink.”

  I pulled my arm back a little. “No—I don’t—I mean, I have to be back at Gambarelli’s soon, or I’ll be marked absent. But what you said—”

  “About earning some extra money?”

  “Yes, but not—I mean, I think you were referring to a certain profession, and I don’t want to do that. I wanted to see if there were other ways.” I looked down at my feet. “I don’t need much more than I earn now. I have a—a child, and I have to pay for her keep.”

  “I had a feeling about you,” he said, smiling. “Still, I’ve got a weakness for hoity-toity girls, so I’ll listen to whatever you’re going to ask me. I’ll walk you to Gambarelli’s while we’re talking. But why not make some money the easy way?”

  “I’m afraid of getting sick or—in a situ
ation again.” I looked up at him. “I’ve learned my lesson about that.” I was able to say it with perfect sincerity.

  “So what are you proposing?”

  I swallowed, my throat dry. “I heard you need other things. Information.”

  “I’ve got all the information about Gambarelli’s I need.”

  I thought furiously. “I could get a position at Rutherford’s, I’m sure I can. As a dressmaker.”

  He snorted in derision. “You think. They only employ the good ones there, Miss Harvey.”

  “I’m good. I’m very good.”

  “Then why are you working at Gambarelli’s?”

  “I only came here from Kansas in March, and I had to find a situation. It’s hard when you’re new. But I’ve got a friend now who can get me considered at Rutherford’s.”

  We walked on in silence until Gambarelli’s was in view. Crabb let go of my arm and turned to face me.

  “I’ll admit it’s not such a bad idea. It’s hard to get new people into Rutherford’s. Those that get in, stay in, and they all earn enough to make them loyal.” His eyes narrowed as he scrutinized my face under the light of a lamp. “If—and, mark you, if, because I doubt you’re good enough—you can get into Rutherford’s, you can come back to me and I’ll see what I can do. If you can’t get in and you’re not willing to work on my terms, don’t bother me again.”

  25

  Go-between

  Working at Gambarelli’s naturally meant that I hadn’t seen Elizabeth Parnell. I had written to her, of course, letting her know we were well settled in at Aldine Square, and had received several letters from her in return. When I was at home on Sunday afternoons, I tried to find time to write back, claiming to be busy settling in to our new life. I hadn’t always succeeded, and some of her letters had gone unanswered. Since our friendship was of recent date, I wondered if she would interpret my sporadic responses as a sign that my interest in her was cooling. There was little I could do about that, and perhaps our friendship would be one of the sacrifices I’d have to make for Martin’s sake.