by Brenda Joyce
Eliza finally looked at her for the first time. “No, thank you, dear,” she said, and suddenly she took her hand and squeezed it. Then she wept, hard and uncontrollably.
Francesca was at a loss. “We will find him,” she whispered unsteadily, tears coming to her own eyes. And then she felt eyes upon her back, and slowly, she looked up.
Bragg’s brows slashed upward. “We?” he asked, at once incredulous and harsh.
She stood, releasing Eliza’s hand. “A mere figure of speech.” She backed away, realizing she must be careful not to tread upon his toes in the future, then wondering just when the boy had been taken. “When was Jonny abducted?” she heard herself ask.
His temper looked as if it were being ratcheted up to frightening degrees, so she added, in a rush, “Bragg! I know them both so well! I have known them ever since the Burtons moved in next door two years ago.”
There was a moment of silence. Bragg seemed somewhat appeased, either that, or he was resigned. Then Burton said, agonized, “We don’t really know. Jonny was in bed when we left for your ball; we returned just before one, and he was gone.”
An image of big brown eyes, a round, smiling face, and a mop of brownish hair filled Francesca’s mind. On her birthday last year, Jonny had presented her with a bouquet of roses—unceremoniously cut from his mother’s gardens. Briefly, Eliza had been angry with him for cutting down half of the blooming bush.
He could have been abducted at any time between eight and one in the morning.
And everyone knew it. Francesca looked around the room. Eliza wept anew. Burton sank down beside her, to cradle her in his arms. She sobbed on his chest. Evan’s mouth was down-turned; her father was as grim. Bragg stood staring at everyone, his fists clenched. Murphy shifted uneasily, as did the man standing with him.
This was terrible, Francesca thought. This was a terrible, needless, outrageous tragedy. But surely they would find Jonny. Clearly Bragg was a very capable man; in fact, he looked as if he were on his own private warpath. And suddenly Francesca was stricken by the most stunning insight. “Bragg!”
He had been handing Murphy the evidence; he whirled. “Miss Cahill?”
“I have just realized that you seek two men, not one,” she gasped.
He opened his mouth but she barreled on. “I mean, the note was left on our desk, in our house, which makes absolutely no sense. It had to have been left there during the ball, that is, while the Burtons were still present. Which means someone left the note while another person was abducting Jonny.” Francesca paused, out of breath.
Bragg stared at her and his eyes literally turned black.
“Good deductive reasoning, Fran,” Evan said admiringly. “But why the hell was the note left at our house and not here? It would be so easy to just drop the note right on Jonny’s bed.”
He had a very good point, the answer to which eluded her, but she couldn’t turn to look at him—he was standing behind her—because Bragg looked as if he wished to strangle her. He said to Murphy, “Please escort Miss Cahill home.” And then he said, directly to her, “Unless this criminal is extremely bold, Miss Cahill. In which case he abducted the child, stashed him somewhere, and then went to your family’s ball.”
Francesca’s eyes widened.
“Or perhaps the note was somehow slipped into your mail on Friday,” Bragg said.
Francesca met his gaze. Their eyes briefly held and she thought, admiringly, he is very clever, indeed.
Bragg turned to her father and brother. “Andrew, Evan, I am afraid I must ask you to leave, as well, as I have a tremendous amount of work to do. I must speak with the Burtons privately.”
“We understand,” Cahill said, and he paused before Bragg, slapping his shoulder. “Good luck, Rick. If anyone can solve this case, I am confident that it is you.”
Bragg nodded, but he did not smile, in fact, he was deathly grim. And in that single moment, it occurred to Francesca just what Bragg was up against, and the amount of pressure he faced.
Francesca felt no small amount of compassion for Bragg then. She did not know Bragg’s complete employment history, but he had been the commissioner of police for exactly eighteen days—if one included today. And he was being presented with a scandalous criminal case; one that would be in the newspapers until it was solved. He could hardly know the men in his command, which might become a damaging drawback to his efforts to solve the case. And was he at all familiar with investigative work?
He caught her staring and said, “Miss Cahill. Do not go out today. I should like to interview you as well when I am finished with my business here.”
Francesca blinked. Why would he wish to interview her? He had already interviewed her, just moments ago. Trepidation filled her instantly, but so did an odd little fluttering of excitement. For she wanted nothing more than to help him solve the ghastly crime. “Very well,” she said earnestly. And her plans to go to the public library were instantly revised.
A pair of patrolmen escorted her, her father, and Evan home. Shortly afterward, their house was also blocked off from the public by half a dozen uniformed guards.
Julia had descended from her apartments, and in the drawing room, she, Evan, and Francesca’s father discussed the terrible abduction.
Francesca walked into her father’s library and stood by the door, staring at the massive desk where she had, last night, found the bizarre note.
A is for ants. What could that mean?
An image of the tiny creatures marching in the sand toward their nest filled her mind, and she dismissed it. Why had the note been left on her father’s desk in the Cahill home and not at the Burtons‘?
Had the criminal been so clever as to hope to be misleading?
But there was another possibility. What if the note had not been left on this desk? What if it had been deposited earlier in the day through their mail slot on the front door? Erroneously, as Bragg had suggested?
Her hands flew to her head and she paced. But wouldn’t that mean that the note had been left before the abduction? Francesca found that unlikely; still, it was possible. If so, it meant that the criminal was very confident—but it also meant that he was very stupid. Because he had erroneously put the note in the wrong mail slot!
However, it would not be the first time such an error had occurred. Occasionally the Cahills received the Burtons’ mail and vice versa.
Francesca was excited. The latter seemed to be a plausible explanation—but that meant they were dealing with one criminal, not two. Didn’t it?
She couldn’t wait to share her theory with Bragg.
Then, as she was about to leave the library, she paused. Maybe she had better keep her suspicions to herself, for now. He did not seem to want her help.
Suddenly she glanced across the large, luxurious room, in the other direction. A number of sofas and chairs were assembled in various seating arrangements. Her father’s favorite chair faced the massive hearth at a right angle. Next to it was a round, leather-inlaid table. At the table’s claw-footed base was a newspaper and magazine rack.
Francesca wandered over, sat down, and pulled out half a dozen papers, including Harper’s Weekly, the Times and the Herald. Instinct made her open Harper’s, which they received on Mondays.
It took her less than a minute to find the cartoon and she almost giggled, despite the tragedy of the abduction.
Rick Bragg was dressed like a cowboy, in cowboy boots with spurs, chaps, a vest, bandanna, and cowboy hat. He was riding a nag—but the nag was bucking wildly. Somehow holding the reins, he was also holding and firing two six-shooters. But more importantly, the nag was attached to a police wagon, and it seemed to be pulling the wagon along on a wild, frantic ride. And in that wagon was the mayor, wide-eyed and panicked, another man with a badge that said “Chief of Police,” and two uniformed patrolmen with their leather helmets. Their expressions of wide-eyed fear and dismay were comical.
But even more comical were the bundles of money sprouting out o
f all three police officers’ pockets.
The caption read: “Will Commissioner Bragg drag the police department with him? To reform or not is the question!”
Bragg’s expression was so perfect, it was blazingly fierce, as if he did intend to drag every reluctant policeman right along with him, come hell or high water.
She laid Harper’s on the end table, her thoughts going back to Jonny Burton. Now what?
There hadn’t been a ransom demand. Not yet, she reminded herself. But she just could not get that fact out of her head. And the note was so strange ...
Her mother’s guest list would undoubtedly be upstairs in her parlor on her secretaire. Francesca hesitated for a single heartbeat, and then she took off.
A maid was changing the bed, Francesca saw through the open door, which attached the parlor to the bedroom. Francesca ignored the girl, going right to the eighteenth-century desk. She sat down, rummaged among the letters there, and found the list. Quickly, she scanned it.
She could not rule out that the culprit had been a guest, even though probability dictated that it was some poor servant seeking a ransom. Or even a crook from the Bowery, coming uptown to prey upon the wealthy. Still, how could she not make a copy of her mother’s guest list? Just in case she might find it useful in the future ...
Francesca calculated that Bragg would be at the Burton home for many hours, for he had clearly stated his intentions to interview the entire household and staff. She could copy the list within an hour—last night they’d had perhaps a hundred and fifty guests. Taking the list, Francesca hurried to her own room. Excitement filled her.
But she had hardly begun the task she had set herself when the grandfather clock in the corner of the room began to chime. Francesca started and turned. It was noon.
A is for Ants. If you want to see the boy, be at Mott and Hester streets tomorrow at 1 P.M.
Francesca stared at the clock as it finished chiming. She was on her feet.
She did not know exactly where Mott and Hester streets were, but from some of the city guidebooks that she had read—in the wake of Jacob Riis’s book—she knew they were downtown, in an unsavory and unsafe neighborhood. She also knew she should not be thinking what she was thinking—which was that if she left now, she could be at Mott and Hester by one o’clock.
What was she doing?
Francesca’s heart raced with alarming speed, and now she paced. She knew Jonny. She knew him far better than she did Eliza, but she admired the other woman greatly. What if she could help the little boy?
What if she got in the way?
Francesca shook her head angrily. She was an intelligent and resourceful woman. What if she could help? God knew, Bragg had his hands full, being the new commissioner, with the city’s hopes running high that he would finally make a difference and reform the city’s police department. Besides, he would undoubtedly be there, along with a number of patrolmen and detectives. It wouldn’t be that terribly dangerous.
He would kill her at first sight.
She would need a disguise.
Her decision was made, and Francesca had no intention of thinking twice. She ran out of her bedroom, and saw a maid passing in the hall. “Betsy! Come here.”
And she dragged the passing housemaid into her room, locking the door behind them.
“Miz Cahill,” Betsy said, eyes wide, appearing confused and somewhat surprised. “Did I do something wrong?”
“No, not at all. Give me all your clothes!”
She had left her carriage two blocks away from the corner where she now crouched in her disguise, on Mulberry Street, almost but not quite comforted by the fact that it was a mere three blocks from police headquarters. Francesca’s heart felt as if it were wedged in her throat. Excitement filled her, but so did fear.
She was crouching against the wall of a tenement building, the kind which she wished to eradicate. In fact, she was in the kind of neighborhood she had only read about; it was one thing to ladle soup to the poor from the kitchen of a church, and it was another to stand where she now stood, in disguise, without a servant, surrounded by every imaginable type of person. The crowd moving up and down both Mott and Hester streets were bundled up in ragged clothes, oblivious to the cold. The reason for the general indifference to the frigid winter weather was immediately obvious; there were six saloons crowded around the busy intersection and their business was robust, indeed. It was Sunday, and it was illegal to serve liquor until midnight, except in hotels, during meals, but working men, mostly of German descent, were stumbling in and out of the various establishments, in various degrees of inebriation. Some of them were openly swilling beer from their cups. Women were drinking, too, but on the street; one of them even had a pail filled with beer. Hoodlums loitered on every stoop, as did beggars, both male and female, some young, some old. Vendors were hawking various wares on Hester Street—earmuffs, mittens, and pharmaceutical remedies—mostly to hordes of Russian women, their heads wrapped in scarves. Raggedly clothed children raced through the crowds. Francesca actually watched one little girl slip her hand into a man’s coat pocket, extracting his purse and running away without the man’s ever noticing.
Other vendors were hawking “hot” meat pies and “delicious” pigs’ feet. Meanwhile, ladies of ill repute sat in the windowsill above the ground-floor establishments, shockingly clad, loudly taunting and ridiculing those passing below.
On the street, the occasional buggy or dray passed by, empty of wares.
Francesca felt as if she had entered a very strange and foreign land. It was the land Jacob Riis had described so accurately in his famous book.
She was cold and she shivered. To further her disguise she was wearing a huge hooded cloak, with the hood pulled up so no one might remark her face. But Betsy’s cloak was threadbare; Francesca had already decided to buy her another one. She had also placed a pillow in her dress, as Betsy was quite plump.
There were some old men on the stoop near where she stood, swilling ale and playing dice, but Francesca ignored them. She was starting to regret her decision to come to the Lower East Side. For even in her disguise, she felt as if she stood out like a sore thumb.
And Bragg waited on the opposite corner in his suit, bowler hat, and long brown overcoat, making no attempt to blend into the crowd.
Passersby gave him a wide berth. And far too many wary glances to count. He had “policeman” written all over him, Francesca thought nervously.
He was impatient and it showed as he paced back and forth in a very tight space, looking around constantly. His gaze was everywhere. Too many times he actually looked directly her way, making Francesca duck and hide.
Of course, Francesca was quite certain that even though he was looking in her direction, he was not gazing at her. There was no way that he could discern who she was while in her disguise.
But where was the criminal responsible for Jonny Burton’s abduction and the odd note?
Francesca had arrived about twenty minutes ago, and although she had no watch, she was certain it was at least ten past one. Bragg was even now pulling out his own pocket watch, snapping it open and snapping it closed. And then he paced again. Even from a distance, his expression was fierce.
Francesca suddenly realized that she was not merely cold, she needed to answer nature’s call. Blast it, she thought, resolved to ignore the growing discomfort.
“Mum. Can you spare a nickel or two? Or maybe even a half-dollar?” A small boyish voice came from behind.
Francesca flinched and met the dark, sloe-eyed gaze of a dark-haired boy with a pinched white face. He grinned at her. The tip of his nose was dark with soot. So were his cheeks. “Please? Me mum’s sick an‘ we ain’t got nuthin’ to eat.”
Francesca stooped lower. “I’m sorry, but I cannot get into my purse now,” she said, meaning it. For if Bragg happened to see, she would be unmasked immediately.
His eyes widened. “I thought you was a rich un. You be a lady, huh? An‘ why are you c
rouchin’ like that? An‘ why do you have a pillow in your coat?”
Francesca blinked, then, flushing and furious, said, “Go away!”
He came closer, no longer holding out his hand. And he stared at her face, still hidden by the hood. He finally said, “The pillow’s comin‘ down just like a baby.” And he grinned.
Francesca looked down just in time to see the pillow land between her feet. “Blast,” she ground out, kicking it behind her. She crouched lower. “Boy, go away this instant, and I mean it!”
He smiled at her, revealing two deep dimples. He was probably ten or eleven years old. “Not unless you give me a dollar or two,” he said slyly.
He had raised his price and she could not believe it. “I may give you a wallop,” she finally said.
“Just try,” he retorted, and locked gazes with her. “ ‘Cause I’ll scream my head off ’n‘ the fox will come and then what will you be, lady?”
“Fox?” she finally managed. This was not going well.
He tossed a glance at Bragg. “Over there. Gent in the suit and bowler hat. Leatherheads everywhere, yes, ma’am.” He seemed very satisfied.
Briefly, Francesca closed her eyes, filing away the boy’s street slang. Then her eyes snapped open. “Does ‘Leatherhead’ mean what I think it means?”
He was cheerful. “Yep. Flies thicker than bees,” he said.
“Flies? As in ‘policemen’?”
He nodded. “All over the place, today. But—uh-oh. Here we go,” he cried.
A police wagon was coming up the street. The four grays pulling it were being whipped along at a ferocious pace. Bragg’s head whipped up, and there was no mistaking his shock. Sergeants and patrolmen spilled from the wagon, rushing to one of the saloons. One policeman kicked the front door in, so hard that it sagged off most of its hinges. Bragg started shouting. The policemen in uniform raced inside the establishment, clubs upraised. And Francesca realized what was happening.
She was witnessing a crackdown on the violation of the Sunday blue laws. The police were closing down the saloon for serving liquor illegally on the Sabbath.