Band of Sisters

by Cathy Gohlke

  To stall for time apart from Belgadt and his staff, Maureen swept the floor and beat the carpets, oiled and rubbed the mahogany found in the furniture and woodwork, polished the lamp brass and andirons, scrubbed the washbowl, and trimmed the lamps—all she could imagine to ready the room for Curtis’s return. Oh, that they could have taken me with them!

  With Drake Meitland’s phone call, Curtis had given up the search for documents; it was too risky to remain. The most they’d dared hope was to leave the house and bring in authorities that very day to release the women being held, exposing Belgadt and his operation through the passageway that Maureen had discovered the night she followed Harder into the study. Such an arrest would not penetrate the web of the organization, nor would it enable them to trace the whereabouts of women already trafficked. Indeed, it put them all at risk for Belgadt’s retaliation. But it would at least free the group of women being held at the moment. Maureen had prayed that Eliza and Alice were among them, alive and well.

  But Victor Belgadt had foiled even that plan. Maureen and Joshua had been packed and waiting by the door when, at the last moment, Belgadt had insisted Curtis leave Maureen as collateral.

  “Collateral?” Curtis had played the unbelieving and indignant guest. “You jest.”

  “I never jest.” And Belgadt had clearly meant it, revolver in hand. “Until you return with Meitland and our new shipment is secured.” He’d motioned the underbutler to return Maureen’s luggage to her room.

  She’d seen the protective rise in Joshua’s chest and known he was about to protest. But realizing that all their lives and the lives of the women beyond the bookcase were at stake, she trusted them to return for her and stepped quickly forward. “I’ll make certain your room is ready for your return, sir.”

  She’d turned before another word could be spoken and climbed the stairs to Curtis’s room, taking refuge in her duties.

  If I’d not stayed, all would have fallen apart in the moment, and Mr. Belgadt would have surely moved the women before we could return—might do so yet.

  If they bring the police to release the women today as planned, I’ll be rescued. But if Curtis truly goes to Washington in an attempt to keep Drake Meitland out of the way longer, I may have another day to wait—and search. But how or where? The moment Drake telephones, the moment he cries foul . . . the women in the tunnel will be moved. We’ll all be exposed. Curtis and Joshua will be tracked down. She dared not guess their end or her own, though frightening images stole through her brain.

  She drew a deep breath, pushing the air down into her belly, held it for a count of five, then allowed it to escape her lips in a slow and steady stream—a strategy she repeated throughout the morning in an effort to maintain her sanity.

  If they don’t return with the police by midafternoon, I’ll know their plans have changed. I’ll play this out as long as I can.

  By two o’clock Maureen had made her decision. If I must stay the night, I’ll risk searchin’ for the safe. There must be one on that far wall. Mr. Belgadt’s eyes shot there as he was tryin’ to decide what to do—just before the phone call. We all saw.

  But what if I find it? How will I get ledgers out of the house and safely away in this weather?

  As windswept torrents of rain continued to pour and beat against the house deep into the afternoon, Maureen’s brain whirred. By the time she served Mr. Belgadt’s late afternoon drink, her head ached with an intensity she’d never known. Every muscle in her neck and back and shoulders screamed.

  “You seem troubled, Mary,” Belgadt crooned sympathetically.

  “It’s nothin’, sir. Just a headache.” She gave a feeble smile.

  “Pity,” he soothed, rising from his chair.

  She stepped back, but her reticence did not deter him.

  He motioned for her to sit down.

  “I’d best help Mrs. Beaton with dinner, sir.”

  But he placed his hands on her shoulders and guided her firmly into the nearest chair. “No, Mary. Not tonight. Nancy can give her all the help she needs. I won’t hear of you working when you’re not feeling well.” He began to massage her shoulders, her neck, her temples. “We must make certain you’re in fine condition for your employer’s return.” He ran his hands down her arms and up again. “Mustn’t we?”

  Maureen heard the simpering smile, the knowledge of power in his voice. Her stomach turned.

  His hands finally rested on her shoulders, a brace surrounding the base of her neck. “Feeling better, Mary?”

  “Yes, sir.” She swallowed, willing her voice to remain steady, willing her skin not to crawl into a shiver, praying her wig did not slip.

  “Perhaps you’d like to go to bed early tonight. Too much tension isn’t good for a woman.”

  Her heart flipped into her stomach. She felt the panic rise as bile in her throat. “I’m afraid I’m not well and ever so likely to be sick, sir.” She coughed loudly, then bolted from the chair, gagging, apron to her mouth, not waiting for his response.

  It was not hard to plead a sick stomach and pounding headache when Nancy came to her locked door. “Tell Mrs. Beaton I’m sorry; I’m ill and cannot serve tonight. I’ve gone to bed.” At least it is my bed, and I’m alone. But when Nancy’s footsteps had faded down the hallway, she rose, trembling, and checked the lock again.

  Disgusted, Drake Meitland threw the unread Washington Evening Post to the dining car seat beside him and pushed cramped fingers through his hair. His head pounded from too much whiskey and the knowledge that everything he’d worked to build with Belgadt was skating a thin edge.

  He knew better than to trust another living soul. Why had he let his guard down with Curtis Morrow?

  The man was smooth—Drake gave him that—suave and courtly with Olivia, daring and a good bluff with Belgadt. But the resemblance, now that he thought about it, was striking: dark-brown eyes, curling hair, tall and slim, and that nearly alabaster skin. It just looked better on a woman. He shook his head. How did he find me? How did he know it was me? It was finished three years ago. She swore her family was dead.

  Drake narrowed his eyes, thinking you could never trust a woman, certainly not a desperate one. Then he groaned inwardly at his own stupidity.

  If only he could take back his words over tonight’s dinner, when he’d confided that it was ironic he’d returned to DC for his biggest coup, since that was where he’d gotten his first lucky break in buying and selling women. Curtis had encouraged his boasting, free with the bottle.

  Drake grimaced as he recalled his words.

  “Started a few years ago with a girl I picked up outside a restaurant. Down on her luck, hungry—she’d had some kind of row with her parents up in Georgetown and run off. But she was prime and clean—to start.” Drake had chuckled, the wine doing its work. Still, he was careful, as always, not to mention names. “Told her I needed a wife and a mother for my two kids. Gave her a full-fledged sob story that my wife had died the month before of consumption, said I was lonely and desperate—needed somebody who understood, or my kids would be sent to live with strangers.”

  I should have noticed his shift in demeanor, but like a fool, I went on.

  “Didn’t take much—a three-dollar gold band and two dollars to a justice of the peace I dragged out in the middle of the night—and voilà: Mrs. Meitland.”

  “Dorothy?” Curtis had asked incredulously.

  “No!” Drake had laughed aloud, thinking that was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. “No, before I married Dorothy. Mrs. Dorothy Meitland, now, she’s the real thing. Purebred—came with papers, license. Wealthy father, bound for inheritance—the works. The other one was a business deal, but a real looker.”

  “So you sold her?” Curtis had been sawing through a prime rib when he asked, and Drake had taken the flush in his face as a response to the chef’s letting a tough cut slide through his kitchen.

  Still, something about the purpling vein in Morrow’s neck had given him pause. But he’d
kept on, glad for an audience. “When I was done with her. She fetched a tolerable price in the brothels in the city—that was before the big raids. But by then she was used up—dirty, you know.” He’d lit a cigarette, uncomfortable with the details. He’d never liked details. “So I married Dorothy—Papa Wakefield’s money and all that.”

  He’d shifted the talk to the plans for the morning and the high-class brothel Curtis still maintained existed. Drake had wanted to go that night, was eager to close the deal. He’d already wasted a week running in circles and needed to get back to New York. Every day he was away, he was losing money—money he couldn’t afford to lose, money he owed Belgadt. A lot was riding on this deal, both to maintain Belgadt’s good graces for having introduced him to Curtis and because Drake’s debts had long outgrown his income.

  But Curtis was clearly in no hurry and claimed they couldn’t interrupt during the brothel’s business hours. If he didn’t know better, Drake would have thought the man was stalling.

  Curtis had just signed for their bill and they were leaving the table when the question casually came.

  “So what happened to her?”

  “Happened?”

  “To Lydia, your brothel wife.”

  Drake caught himself just in time and, shrugging, feigned a slump of regret, a curse that she’d run off, ungrateful as she was. He’d willed his face and hands steady when he told Curtis he’d meet him in the hotel lobby the next morning at ten.

  Drake had tried phoning Belgadt from behind the hotel desk but learned that though the lines in the area were operating, Belgadt’s line was out of order once again. It had taken Drake less than five minutes to return to his room, load and pocket his revolver, throw a few essentials into his bag, and slip unseen down the hotel’s fire escape. He’d caught a cab to the station and run to catch the night’s last train to Manhattan.

  Now the waiter removed Drake’s cold, untouched coffee. Drake tamped and lit another cigarette, cursing himself again for his boasting, wishing he could will the train to pick up speed, desperate to reach Belgadt before Curtis did, and wondering for the twentieth time who else was in the game.

  As the train drew closer to Penn Station, Drake decided he’d have enough time before the morning train to Cold Spring to make it home and pick up a peace offering for Belgadt—or a bargaining chip for his life.

  Despite her dread and fear, Maureen had fallen asleep sometime after the downstairs clock bonged eight.

  She woke when someone tried her door—once, twice. Then came a half grunt and steps faded away. A door down the hallway opened and closed. A lock clicked, and all was silent. She waited for the clock to strike the half hour and then one.

  Breathing slowly in and out, she waited until it struck one thirty, then two, and two thirty. Maureen rose, threaded the slender lock-picking tools through her wig, pushed the small vial of acid deep into the lining of her cloak, and pocketed in her uniform a small flashlight. She moved silently down the stairs to Curtis’s empty room, carefully pulling the door behind her. Glimpsing through the drawn draperies, she caught no reflection of light outside Belgadt’s study.

  Maureen waited another thirty minutes before slipping from the room. She hesitated by Belgadt’s door, registered his soft but steady snore, then crept down the stairs, keeping to the wall. No lamp burned in the hallway below. But as she stepped onto the main floor, a male voice not fifteen feet away demanded through the dark, “Who’s there?”

  Maureen’s breath caught. She didn’t move, didn’t speak.

  “I say, who’s there?” The voice demanded again, this time more forcefully and identifiable as Collins.

  Her heart in her throat, Maureen nearly stepped forward, but from the end of the hallway came the swoosh of a door as it swung open. A pale light shone on slippered feet.

  “It’s just me, sir—Nancy,” a second voice whispered.

  “What the devil are you doing down here, creeping about the house this time of night?” Collins demanded gruffly, but the feet stepped quickly forward.

  Maureen pressed her back against the wall and slid round to crouch at the side of the stairs.

  “Mrs. Beaton told me you’d be keeping watch tonight,” Nancy simpered, “and I thought you might like a sandwich and a cup of coffee to keep you company.”

  “You did, did you?” Collins sounded pleased. “You stayed up all this time just to fetch me a snack?”

  “I couldn’t sleep, that’s all,” came the coquettish reply.

  “Well, seeing as how I’m not sleeping either, how about you keep me company?”

  “Thought you’d never ask.” The giggle in Nancy’s voice was muffled by the door’s soft swoosh.

  Maureen peeked round the corner of the stairs and saw the pale light bob beneath the door as if going downstairs toward the kitchen.

  In less than a minute Maureen slipped through the study door, closed it behind her, and pulled the flashlight from her pocket.

  The targeted wall held five life-size portraits. How she would lift even one from its hanger to open a safe on the wall behind, Maureen couldn’t imagine. She forced the panic down, forced herself to breathe again. Finding the safe is the first thing. One step at a time.

  She tipped the corner of the first painting. Finding no safe behind, she tipped the edge of the second, the third, and the fourth. “This is it, then,” she whispered as she pulled back the corner of the last. But there was only wallpaper.

  How can that be? He was surely headed for this wall!

  She thought back to the moment Belgadt’s eyes glimpsed the wall. She pictured him in his overstuffed chair beside the fire, imagined again the conversation. She tiptoed across the room, sat in the chair herself, looked up as Belgadt had done when speaking to Curtis, then rose and headed for the wall.

  She stepped around the long, ivory-inlaid credenza that ran beneath the portraits, ran her hands along the seams of the wallpaper, hoping for an unseen edge. But there was nothing. Think, think! The house is riddled with hidey-holes. The tunnel was hidden by a bookcase, its lever in the andiron. If there’s a safe, it must be accessed by something in plain sight—something normal or useful.

  She swept her light over the wall and then the credenza again, slid open its doors. She pushed, hoping to glimpse the wall behind, but it was too heavy to move—unnecessarily heavy.

  Maureen ran her hand over the sideboard’s end, then the opposite end. She stepped back, frustrated, and ran the light over the entire piece once more. Something’s not right. What is it?

  Then it registered. The piece was not entirely symmetrical, at least not inside. The doors opened in the middle of the piece, but there was more than an extra hand’s breadth of storage space on one side than the other. And yet the interior wall was solid. Maureen ran her fingers along each interior edge. No buttons or levers, no indentations to gain a handhold.

  She closed the doors, running her light round the edges of the piece, letting her fingers follow. Just beneath the back corner on the short end, her palm caught a tiny, raised button she could feel but not see. One press and it popped the outside end panel open. So here you are, you hide-and-seeker!

  Maureen sat back on her knees, studying the lock. My “hairpins” won’t do for this, more’s the pity. She pulled the small vial of acid from her cloak. Holding her breath and bracing the light against the base of the credenza, she twisted the cap and released the stopper.

  Maureen prayed that Collins was busy with Nancy, that he’d stay in the kitchen below stairs, that his nose would not pick up the unusual scent. She’d never prayed so many prayers in all her life. And now she prayed that Someone was listening.

  She was not prepared for the number of ledgers Victor Belgadt had accumulated or for the extent of his “property holdings.” She knew there was no time to decide which were the most pertinent, the most incriminating.

  In the end she creased random pages near each book’s spine, then swiftly, quietly, tore two or three from each one. Sh
e folded the lined pages into tight rectangles and forced them through the lining of her cloak.

  Maureen hid the ledgers behind books in the bookcase’s far corners, on shelves as high and low as she could reach so they would not all be in the same location. Belgadt might discover someone had been there, but he would not be so quick to find what she hoped the police—or better yet, Curtis and Joshua—might find when Belgadt was arrested.

  She closed the safe door, no matter that a hole had burned through its metal large enough to pull out the lock. She closed the wooden panel of the credenza. Then she swept the light across the carpet, making sure no sign of her work remained, and turned toward the fireplace’s andirons.

  Olivia had vowed to do everything possible to honor her sister’s wishes and maintain her privacy. But Dorothy needed medication and medical attention. It was the middle of the night, and she tossed and turned as her fever raged. Olivia was certain her sister had lost ten pounds in the last month, and the dark circles beneath her eyes had deepened. But Dorothy had made her promise not to call for the doctor again, nor alert the staff.

  “There’s nothing they can do, and the fever will pass. It always passes,” Dorothy had weakly protested.

  Olivia wrung the cloth into the china bowl on the bedside table and wiped her sister’s brow.

  “Drake,” Dorothy mumbled, nearly delirious.

  Drake is the one who got you into this. Why isn’t he the one suffering? Perhaps I should regret or feel shame for such a thought—a wish, in fact—but I don’t. He might as well have put a gun to her head.

  And then Olivia wept silent tears of anger and frustration for Dorothy, the sister who’d thought she was marrying a prince—someone who loved and cherished her, someone who wanted to father a child with her. My precious Dorothy, you wanted children nearly more than life itself. There will be no children now nor ever.