by Michelle Cox
“You should go now, I am thinking,” said a voice, firm and steady, from the doorway. Elsie, rubbing her wrist, looked over and felt a wave of gratitude to see Gunther standing there. Lloyd looked, too, and stepped back, scowling first at Gunther and then at her.
“Who’s this?” Lloyd asked, breathlessly.
“My name is Gunther Stockel,” Gunther said steadily.
“A Kraut, eh?” Lloyd said, standing up straight and pulling his waistcoat back into place. “Seems you’re always conveniently hovering about, like a faithful dog, aren’t you? Looking for scraps, I imagine. Well, there’re plenty here, I’d say,” he said, nodding his head toward the floor above them. “I wouldn’t get any ideas with this one, though, Kraut,” he said, looking at Elsie. “You’re barking up the wrong tree. And she’s a bit cold—for a bitch that is.”
“How dare you!” Elsie whispered, both infuriated and ashamed all in one.
Gunther instantly moved across the room and advanced upon Lloyd, grabbing him by the lapels of his jacket and giving him a shake. “Get out of here!” he said fiercely. For a moment Elsie thought he was going to strike him.
“Steady on, Kraut,” Lloyd said, roughly pushing Gunther away. “I could have you deported, you know,” he growled. He stood, adjusting his tie and slicking back his hair with his hands, which seemed to calm him, and his lips curled up into another smirk. “Don’t worry. I’ll show myself out.” With irritating slowness, he walked toward the door, but he paused before going through, turning back toward them.
Gunther stepped slightly in front of Elsie.
“By the way, shall I tell dear Aunt Agatha that the wedding bells are not to ring forth?” Lloyd asked with mock sweetness. “Or will you? Should I mention your other plans?” he asked, glancing at Gunther. “I’d love to be a fly on the wall when old Exley hears them. Or do they already know? No? I didn’t think so,” he said, seeing the fear on her face. He bowed deeply. “Well, good-bye then, Elsie. I’d say that I’ll look for news of you in the society pages, but somehow I don’t think you’ll feature too often,” he said with a scowl, his natural facial expression, it seemed, and with that, he finally left the room.
Elsie and Gunther stood motionless until the heavy outer door thudded shut. Upon hearing it close, Elsie let out a tiny moan and burst into sobs. She was keenly aware of Gunther standing next to her, and she felt all the more small and awful that he was witnessing her weakness, but she couldn’t have held back the tears even if she wanted to. They had been building for so long now, and they needed to come out. She covered her face with her hands and rounded her shoulders away from him, wishing she could curl up into a ball. She stiffened when she felt his hand on her arm and tried to choke back her tears.
“Elsie . . .” he said gently.
She stood up straighter, then, and attempted to wipe her eyes with her fists. He held out his handkerchief to her. “You’d better have this back,” he said with a smile, and she could not help but give a little laugh as she took it.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said, looking up at him, as she blew her nose.
“You could not possibly know what it is I am thinking,” he said softly and took her hand.
Chapter 21
“Well, what do you think?” Henrietta asked, as she leaned across Sergeant Davis’s desk, studying his face carefully. “You’re sure this is where he went?” the detective asked, looking at the letter again. It was the same thin, cheap paper that Clive had handed her weeks ago when he had showed her the letter he had found from Susan in Alcott’s study. Only this one read:
Lucky’s, Elston & Division, Jan 4, 4:00 p.m. Alone. Susan.
“Yes, I’m sure of it,” Henrietta answered.
“And you found this where?” he asked, as he picked up a crumpled pack of cigarettes on his desk and fished around inside it.
“On Clive’s bureau!” she said, exasperated.
“Go on,” he said, putting what looked to be the last of his cigarettes to his lips and lighting it.
“I’ve already told you everything!”
“Tell me again,” he said, inhaling and blowing a cloud of smoke towards her.
“Look, Sergeant, I’m married to a detective,” she said, waving the smoke away, “so I’m aware of all of your little tricks. Can’t we just get on with this? We’ve got to hurry! If I knew it was going to take this long to convince you, I would have come earlier. Or not at all.”
Davis grinned crookedly. “Okay, okay. Let me get this straight. Your hubby gets roughed up outside the Aragon by Susan’s gang—or Neptune, as you’re calling him now—where they demand their missing cash. Howard goes home, miraculously discovers—”
“It wasn’t miraculous.”
“Miraculously discovers the missing cash from his pops—and a note,” he added, his eyes skeptical. “Then a letter arrives on his desk somehow—neither of you has figured out how yet—telling him where and when to meet this Neptune character. He sticks it in his pocket, tells you who it’s from and what’s in it, but won’t give you the details. Says it’s too dangerous. You turn on the waterworks; he still won’t budge. Next day, you say you’ve got to go into the city to say good-bye to your brothers who are being shipped off to boarding school. Howard’s not too happy to let you go into the city alone. Can’t go with you as he’s supposed to show up at the family five-and-dime that day, so he proposes that the fat butler escort you, as a what?—protector?” he asked, skeptical again.
“How do you know he’s fat?” Henrietta asked, her eyes narrowed.
Davis didn’t respond but just looked at her steadily, as if he knew something she didn’t. Could he have been spying on them? she mused. That didn’t seem likely . . . Oh, what did it matter at this point, anyway? she decided and tried her best to stare back at him.
They continued to look at each other for several moments, both of them refusing to back down. Henrietta could swear he was teasing her; he looked as though he would laugh at any moment, and she had to eventually bite back her own smile that threatened to escape.
“I wouldn’t call him fat,” she said finally. “Portly, maybe.”
“It was a guess,” Davis confessed, chuckling a little, as he rubbed his stubbly chin. He was the very flirty type. She had seen it a hundred times before. Once upon a time, she might have even fallen for it . . .
“But you refused his company. Why?” he asked, intrigued.
“I’ve already told you this. It has no bearing on the case! Billings is the ultimate spy. He knows everything that goes on in that house, and he reports it back to either Clive or Antonia. He’s obnoxious.”
“So he knows everything that goes on in the house, but he can’t explain how these letters are getting in.”
“I wouldn’t know, Sergeant! I wasn’t the one who questioned him.”
“Okay, okay.” Davis thought for a moment. “So somehow you persuade the hubby—I won’t say how—” he said, suggestively looking at her with a raised eyebrow, reminding her shockingly of Clive, “to let you go into the city without the spying butler.”
Henrietta bit the inside of her lip at how close he was to the truth, but she managed to keep her face a blank.
“So the chauffer—Fritz, is it?—drives you into the city to Palmer Square,” he went on with an annoying grin, “and you visit your family. Anything unusual?”
“With Fritz? Or them?”
“With anything. Isn’t this where you picked up the two thugs following you on Christmas Eve?”
“Yes,” Henrietta answered slowly, thinking about this.
“See anyone?”
“I don’t think so . . .”
“Did you go anywhere else?”
“Really, Sergeant. Again, this has no bearing on the case.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” he said, leaning back. He inhaled deeply, watching her in what seemed a very inappropriate way.
“Sergeant, are you going to help me or not?”
“I
’m getting to it,” he said, crushing his cigarette into the overflowing ashtray in front of him. “So this morning, hubby says he’s off to the five-and-dime again, but you suspect this is the rendezvous. But you didn’t suspect that the day before. Why?”
“Because he didn’t take his briefcase today.”
“That’s it? That’s all you have to go on?”
“Yes,” she said severely, “it is.”
“Right,” he said, crossing his arms. “So off he goes, and then you panic. Start to look through his things. And you find this on his bureau,” he said, holding up the letter again. “Anything else?”
“No, that’s it!” she said impatiently. “Now, let’s go!”
“Is he armed?”
Henrietta was a little taken back by the question. “Yes, he always has his revolver on him.”
“Except on New Year’s Eve at the Aragon?”
“That was my fault.”
“So you’ve said. Because it would interfere with your dancing,” he said mockingly.
“Listen, can we get on with this? Perhaps there’s someone else here who could help me?” she asked, making a show of looking around.
“All right, all right, sister. Don’t go upsetting your apple cart.” He opened his desk drawer and riffled through the contents until he found another crumpled package of cigarettes. “This is my spare,” he said, glancing over at her as he fished for another cigarette and put it to his lips. He struck a match and lit it. “There’s one thing that doesn’t quite make sense, though” he said, exhaling.
“What?”
“If this rendezvous is really where Howard went, why would he go it alone? He seems halfway intelligent and an ex-copper to boot. He has to know he’s walking into a trap or at least a very bad situation. Why not arrange an escort or a stakeout? He’s gone out of his way to bring me into the loop before this. Why not now at the crucial moment?”
“I don’t know! The note said ‘alone,’ so . . . ”
Davis let out a laugh.
Why was he laughing at her? She admitted that Clive’s decision was reckless. Why indeed had he gone alone? she asked herself for the hundredth time.
“I don’t know, Sergeant,” she repeated. “It doesn’t make any sense. Except that he has some sort of personal vendetta against Neptune. “He . . . he has a sort of obsession with me—Neptune, that is. Maybe it’s to be some sort of one-on-one, like a duel or something.”
“Assuming that would really be very stupid on Howard’s part. And, anyway, aren’t you two supposed to be a team?” he asked, taking a deep drag and then blowing the smoke out thoughtfully. “Why would he leave behind his pretty partner?”
There was a time when Henrietta would have felt the slight Davis was insinuating, but not this time. It was too personal now to Clive, she knew. He was out to get Neptune, and to bring her along with him would not have even been in the realm of possibility in Clive’s mind. He had barely been able to handle her coming along to stake out the cottage in Derbyshire in which his cousin Wallace had sat hiding out with his wife and child, she remembered with a small smile. This one, she knew, was out of the question.
“Unless he figured on you finding this and acting on it . . .” Davis muttered, absently twisting the note between his thumb and forefinger.
At his words, a cold realization gripped Henrietta’s heart. Was that what this note was? A communication from Clive? Perhaps . . . Could he have trusted her in this way? Was he counting on her to figure it out? To bring along backup? Or was it so that she would know where to look for his body, should it all go wrong? Damn it! Hadn’t Clive repeatedly chastised his father’s ill-thought-out plan, and yet here he was seeming to engage himself in something equally foolhardy. There must be something more to it, she determined, and she had failed to deduce it!
She stood up hurriedly, the chair scraping against the floor. “I’m leaving, Sergeant, whether you’re coming with me or not.”
And she meant it. She was prepared to go it alone, having taken precautions yesterday for just such an event. Involving the police had been Lucy’s idea, not hers. But she had done that now, Henrietta absolved herself, and if Sergeant Davis chose not to help her, then she would resort to plan B, sketchy though it was.
While it was true that she had gone into the city yesterday to see her brothers off, she had used the opportunity to conduct an additional “errand,” one could call it, as Davis had come very close to ferreting out.
Early yesterday morning, she had crept into the study at Highbury to use the telephone, asking the operator to put a call through to Lucy Szweda, LAK-0421. Henrietta anxiously twisted the thick leather cord around her finger as she waited and offered up a silent prayer of thanks when Lucy finally answered, sounding groggy. The girls usually slept in, she knew from experience, from working so late at night.
“Listen, Lucy, it’s Henrietta,” she said quietly.
“Well, hello, sweets. Bit early, isn’t it? Anything wrong?” came Lucy’s scratchy voice through the line.
“No, nothing’s wrong. Sorry it’s so early. Say, you wouldn’t have Rose’s telephone number, would you?” she asked.
“Rose? What’s the gig, gumdrop?” Lucy asked, obviously curious considering the tenuous situation between Henrietta and Rose.
“I need to borrow something from her,” Henrietta said in a low tone, hoping Billings wasn’t hovering outside the door.
“Borrow something? Like what?”
“Like, her g-u-n,” she whispered.
Ever since the letter had appeared in Alcott’s—now Clive’s—study, Clive had been moody and grim. Henrietta knew that he did not mean to involve her—he had told her as much—but she was uneasy just the same. She had a bad feeling about the whole thing. Considering that Jack had been Neptune’s agent and had lived here under the same roof, she didn’t think she could be too careful. Who knew where and when Neptune would pop up, or who was working for him? She knew Clive would never give her something like a firearm, nor did she want one, really, but this current situation called for extreme measures. But time was short, she felt, and she hadn’t the slightest idea of how or where to procure a gun, though she thought she had seen some shotguns hanging on the back wall of the hardware store where she had gone to have the sign made for Clive’s detective agency. It was then that she remembered that Rose had a gun, or at least she had once had one. Last year, on that dreadful night when Neptune had captured her and Clive, it had been Rose who had produced a gun to hold Neptune’s thugs at bay until the police could get there. How or why Rose had procured a pistol no one had ever asked, and Henrietta had put it out of her mind until now.
“Her gun?” Lucy whispered back. “What’s happening, Henrietta? Are you in danger?” she asked.
“Not exactly. Look, it’s a long story. Can I tell you later? I just need Rose’s telephone number.”
“They don’t have a telephone,” Lucy said slowly. “Tell you what, sweets. I’ll talk to Rose and ask her to bring it to work later today. We’re both on at four. That is, if she still has it—and if she’ll agree to lend it to you. You’ll have to do some explaining, I’d imagine.”
“Oh, I don’t want her to have to bring it to work. I’ll go to her house and get it . . . if you think she wouldn’t mind.”
“Better not, sweets. She don’t like no one going ‘round the house. It’s her dad. Bit of an ass, if you know what I mean.”
Unfortunately, Henrietta did.
“All right, then. I’ll be at the Melody Mill at four. And thanks, Luce.”
“Still need us, don’t you, gumdrop?” she said, her voice sounding thick with satisfaction, as Henrietta hung up the heavy receiver.
Henrietta had Fritz drive her to Palmer Square later that same day, where she distributed sweets and pocket money to the boys as well as what she hoped was an encouraging speech. Ma was surly and out of sorts, as usual, and Elsie, too, seemed peevish. But maybe it was just her. Henrietta was sad to see the boys
go, but she knew there was nothing she could do, and, in truth, she found herself eventually coming around to Clive’s point of view over the intervening months, which was that perhaps it wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
But even if she wanted to dwell on these many problems at home, she didn’t have that luxury at the moment. She sensed, even at that point, that she and Clive were somehow in very grave danger, and it was all she could think of.
She bided her time as best she could, trying to make conversation with Elsie about how the Penningtons’ Ball had gone, but Elsie had been oddly evasive regarding it. It had been on the tip of her lips to tell her about seeing Stan and Rose at the Aragon, but then she had thought better of it and had instead told her, in whispers, how Clive had been beaten up in an alley outside. She kept nervously glancing up at the clock on the mantel every few minutes, only half listening to Elsie telling her some story of an injured janitor at Mundelein, until the clock had finally struck 3:30 and she was able to summon Karl to have Fritz bring the car back around. There was a tearful good-bye all around, as Henrietta told them to do well, to uphold the Von Harmon name, such as it was, and that if they were good, she might come and visit them.
Once seated in the back of the Daimler, she instructed Fritz, trying to keep her voice steady, to drive her to the Melody Mill instead of straight home.
“Yes, madam,” Fritz answered dully and only once looked in the rearview mirror at her. She was gambling on Fritz not mentioning her side errand to Clive or Antonia, and she hoped the odds were in her favor, as Clive had once told her that a chauffeur, like a valet, had a responsibility to keep certain things private. Henrietta was sure that this referred only to the master of the house, but, she thought, with a wry smile, what was good for the goose . . .
Despite these progressive hopes, however, she still had Fritz drop her off a block down from the Melody Mill on Belmont, not so much to keep Fritz in the dark as to her ultimate destination, but to not draw attention to herself as she entered the dance hall.
She walked briskly down the sidewalk, keeping her head down against the wind, and slipped inside. She stood for a moment to let her eyes get adjusted to the dim interior. Lucy must have been watching for her, though, because she came over right away, calling to Rose as she did so, who, even despite their “friendly chat” on New Year’s Eve, approached warily. Henrietta saw that she nervously clutched a black handbag, which Henrietta was pretty sure contained the little pistol. Lucy again asked her what was going on, looking over her shoulder to make sure the owner wasn’t in sight, and reminding Henrietta that she didn’t have much time to “spill the beans.”