by Amy Stewart
Edna’s face was a mask. Her little mouth was set in a rigid line. Minnie wanted to go over and put an arm around her, but she didn’t dare.
“Oh . . . I suppose it’s better that I didn’t have to hear it announced in front of everyone,” Edna said in a monotone. “It was good of you to tell me first.”
“But that’s not all of it!” Ruby said. “I came to tell you that my passage is paid for, and Daddy doesn’t know about it, so he won’t try to get the money back. You might as well take it. You can leave in a few weeks!”
“But—what am I to do on my own? I can’t just go without a group.”
“Oh, of course you can. There are so many groups. Just go to Paris and appeal to Mrs. Wharton. She’s running all kinds of relief programs.”
“Mrs. Wharton?”
“Yes, the novelist! She prints her address in the paper. She expects Americans to come to her. She’s begging us to.”
“Just—go to Paris? But I haven’t the money to stay once I’m there.”
“Mrs. Wharton will find the money. Or someone like her. It isn’t as hard as all that.”
Minnie edged a little closer. Ruby looked over at her.
“Plenty of other girls already paid for their passage, too,” she said to Minnie. “I’m sure at least one of them can keep a secret from their father.”
THAT NIGHT, EDNA and Minnie walked home under a deep purple sky and a half-moon that hung low on the horizon. They meandered along, too lost in conversation to bother with the most direct path to Mrs. Turnbull’s.
“I have some money,” Minnie said. “Or rather, I have a few trinkets hidden away. I’ve been meaning to go and collect them. They’re just little things, but I can sell them.”
“You’re only sixteen,” Edna said, “and, anyway, I don’t think Deputy Kopp would allow it.”
“She won’t have a thing to say about it, once we’re on the boat.” Just picturing it—Minnie on the deck of a ship, looking out over the rail at the receding skyline of New York—thrilled her like nothing she’d ever imagined before.
“But it’s going to be awfully hard work,” Edna said, “and dangerous. You mustn’t go just to have a gay time in Paris. I want to do my duty as an American, and that means I’m going to the front.”
“I want —” Minnie stopped herself. What she started to say was: I want to go wherever you’re going. But what would Edna think of her if she said a thing like that?
In the short time she’d known Edna, Minnie had come to see her for the extraordinary creature that she was. Edna was singularly focused on the war and her duty to it. Edna would dress wounds and hold the hands of soldiers while they screamed in surgery. Edna would peel potatoes and carry dinner through the fields, under cover of darkness. She would learn to drive an ambulance and work the semaphore flags and whatever else needed doing in service of a call that she heard more clearly than anyone Minnie had ever met.
But she needed someone by her side. Edna had an endless reservoir of determination, and all the high ideals in the world, but she didn’t know how to bluff, or play a trick, or talk her way into a room where she wasn’t invited. She was constitutionally unable to lie or cheat or hide anything—money, jewels, the truth. Minnie could do all of that, and while she didn’t know much about war, she was fairly certain that something in that line might be called for.
Minnie would get them to Paris. She would find Mrs. Wharton. She would get them on a train, or in a soldier’s auto heading to the front. She would see to it that they were fed and housed. They would go through the war together. They needed each other. She was sure of it.
Minnie reached out to stop Edna, and they turned to look at each other.
She couldn’t bring herself to tell Edna that she’d never understood what it meant to put her life to a purpose outside herself, until now.
And she couldn’t say that something had always been missing, and she’d always wondered who or what it might be, until now.
That something, improbably enough, was Edna.
Minnie had never felt protective of anyone before, but she was prepared to stand up for Edna, and defend her, and watch out for her. She couldn’t say any of that either.
What she said, at last, was “I’m an American, too, aren’t I?”
61
SHE CAME BACK TO THEM on a Sunday.
The horse’s water trough had rusted through and Norma’s attempt to patch it with a sheet of metal failed. She hated to buy a new trough, owing to the expense. Constance had to take her through the previous year’s ledger-books to show her that repairs took their financial toll in the spring, and it was to be expected. That led to grumbling over the inadequacy of the Sinking Fund that Norma had established, and the need to further trim their sails to replenish it. Constance told Norma she had every confidence in her ability to make the numbers come out right. Norma did not find that reassuring.
The trough sat on a rather complicated wooden stand of Norma’s own invention. It took both of them to wrestle the old one out of the stand and get the new one, which was of a slightly different size, properly situated.
Constance was in a foul mood owing to the fact that Norma had dragged her out of bed at six o’clock for a day of chores, when she’d come home prepared to do nothing more than sleep and read a book in the bath. She hated to be mucking about in the barn before noon, when the cold leached out of the floor boards and the frost clung to the roof.
They did what they could for the trough. The horse seemed satisfied enough with it. Constance was relieved to see Carolyn Borus drive up before Norma could inflict some other domestic tedium on her. Carolyn came running out of her motor car, waving a letter at them.
“We’re sending a message to the White House!” she called. “There’s a nationwide effort underway to deliver letters to President Wilson by messenger pigeon. Twenty pigeon-keepers in Washington have signed on. We’re to write a letter, and the birds will be sent here by train for us to release back to the capital. What shall we say to the President?”
Norma pulled off her gloves and took the letter. Constance read it over her shoulder.
“Only a few dozen pigeon societies have been chosen to receive the birds, and ours is one of them,” Carolyn said.
“Let me make sure I understand,” Constance said. “To send a letter by pigeon to the White House, it must be raised in Washington and transported here by train, because of course they can only fly home to the place they were born.”
Norma looked up at Carolyn with an expression of apology for her slow-witted sister.
“Of course,” Norma said irritably. “How else would we do it?”
“And then you will attach the letter and it will fly back to its loft near the White House.”
“Exactly.”
“Whereupon the letter will be removed and delivered to the President.”
“It’s a simple-enough plan and I don’t know why you pretend not to be able to follow it.”
One of the chickens kicked up a great fuss, and Constance looked over in time to see her raise herself slightly out of the straw and lay an egg. The Leghorns always complained the loudest. After she settled down again, Constance said, “I follow it just fine, but if you’re trying to demonstrate some efficiency in transmitting messages, I’m afraid the post office has you beat.”
“We aren’t doing it for the sake of efficiency,” Norma said.
“She’s right,” Carolyn put in. “The idea is to make a sort of spectacle of it and to put us in the public eye. We want the President and his generals to see the speed and secrecy by which a bird can deliver missives in wartime.”
“We do need a spectacle, which means you’ll have to ask Carrie to write a newspaper story,” Norma said, “although my name won’t be in it, and she won’t be allowed to fill it with lies.”
“That’s just fine,” Constance said. “She’ll be delighted. I’ll leave you to your letter-writing.”
She tried to disappear back into th
e house, but Norma had a list of chores that required four hands. After a little more discussion with Carolyn, Norma sent her on her way so they could finish.
It was only a few minutes later that another motor car arrived and Fleurette disembarked. Mr. Impediment hauled a trunk out and deposited it upon their porch, along with more hat-boxes, handbags, and wraps than she possibly could’ve left with. He tipped his hat to all three of them and drove away, leaving Fleurette anchored to her spot in the drive, staring at Norma and Constance.
What a sight they made! There was Fleurette, in a little day dress of blue and white foulard, with pearl buttons at the neck and a matching set along her hatband—and here was Norma in her muddiest old divided skirt and a sweater that must have belonged to Francis, and Constance in the corduroy number that was her night-dress at the jail, which she’d brought home to wash but ended up sleeping in once again instead. Neither of them looked as though they’d seen a comb or a powder puff in their lives, while Fleurette’s hair was done to a high gloss and she wore a shade of claret-colored lip-stick that seemed to have been made for her.
She didn’t look like a little girl dressing up in her mother’s clothes anymore. She hadn’t in some time, really, but that realization was made all the more startling by her sudden and unexpected appearance in the drive.
Fleurette spoke first. “Did I see Mrs. Borus go past?”
“She was just here with some very important news,” Constance said. “Norma’s pigeons are going to Washington.”
“Not my pigeons,” Norma said. “Other pigeons. Constance still doesn’t understand it.”
Fleurette drew closer and Constance managed to get an arm around her. “I sent you postcards,” she said.
“Yes, and we found them very thrilling,” Constance said. “All that lobster and Champagne.”
“Not so very much Champagne,” she said. “And four girls to a room. I didn’t tell you that part. I awoke every morning to Charlotte Babcock’s feet on my pillow.”
“I don’t suppose they let you out to have any fun at all?” Constance asked, trying to sound sympathetic. “Mrs. Ward must have so many admirers. I’m sure you had invitations.”
“Oh, we had our wild times,” Fleurette said. “Men can’t resist a girl on stage. But I was too exhausted from doing two shows a night. It’s quite a different pace than Mrs. Hansen’s. One has to adapt to a life on the stage.”
She squirmed away and released a cloud of some new perfume—lilies of the valley, maybe, or jasmine. It was expensive, whatever it was, and a mighty battle waged in Constance’s mind between the forces that wanted to know who had purchased it for her, and those that believed it better to leave that question unanswered.
Constance followed Fleurette into the house. Norma washed her hands at the pump in the barn and came in behind them.
Fleurette looked around at the dim parlor and sighed. “Nothing’s changed around here. Nothing ever changes. I’ve gone off and traveled all over five states, and seen new faces everywhere I go, and learned a dozen new songs and performed to thousands, and what’s new around here? Absolutely nothing.”
Norma and Constance busied themselves bringing in Fleurette’s bags, which were still piled on the porch. She’d obviously grown accustomed to having someone else carry her things. Constance thought it might not be such a good idea to give the impression that she’d be taking on those duties, but she did it anyway. Norma raised an eyebrow at Constance just once, when she spotted a new red and gold embossed hat-box with a tag attached bearing May Ward’s name. It must have been a gift. As far as Constance could tell, Mrs. Ward had kept her secret.
“I suppose you’ve been down at that gloomy old jail all this time,” Fleurette said. “Did you arrest anybody while I was gone? Did you catch a thief, or a murderer?”
“She found a job at the powder works for a girl,” Norma said.
Fleurette let out a bright and dismissive laugh. “Is that all they pay you to do—put girls into factory jobs?”
Norma said, “Just yesterday we had a letter from a moving picture man inviting Constance to make a picture about a lady deputy who rescues girls from white slavers.”
“I wouldn’t like to see a picture about that,” Fleurette said. “Write them back and tell them she has a younger sister who’s so pretty she’s been threatened with kidnapping. Perhaps I can go missing and you can come to my rescue.”
Constance tried very hard not to look at Norma. “That sounds awfully dull.”
“Not as dull as this old farmhouse.” She unpinned her hat and handed it to Constance, the way she might pass something to a valet.
“I could arrange to have someone shoot at us again, if you’d like that better,” Constance said. “Or aren’t you about to go right back out on tour?”
Fleurette wandered into her sewing room. She ran her hand over her sewing machine, and the bolts of fabric, and all the spools of thread hung on pegs on the wall. “I wouldn’t mind sleeping in my own room for a while, with all my things,” she said, a little quietly.
Constance carried her bags upstairs, quickly, before she could change her mind.
Historical Notes
and Sources
READERS OF THE FIRST two books in this series, Girl Waits with Gun and Lady Cop Makes Trouble, might already know that Constance, Norma, and Fleurette Kopp were real people, and that the events in these books are based as much as possible on the real events in their lives. I encourage you to read the historical notes in those books if you’d like to know more about their background and family history.
As with the previous two books, I rely on fiction to fill in the gaps in the historical record. In some cases, I moved dates around or altered minor details to help tell a more cohesive story, as I’ll explain here.
In early 1916, Constance was working as New Jersey’s first female deputy sheriff, and one of the first in the nation. In those days, women in law enforcement were rarely given a gun, a badge, and arrest authority, much less paid the same as a man. This makes Constance’s experience fairly unique. It’s not exactly clear when Constance received her badge, but it was first reported in the New York Times on February 13, 1916. She was then the subject of major newspaper profiles nationwide, which (according to papers) brought her a flood of marriage proposals and other mail.
Edna Heustis was arrested on March 9, 1916, and released on March 14 after a short investigation by Constance. Judge Seufert really was the judge on the case, and much of what Constance said to the judge comes directly from the newspaper account cited below. Edna did leave her home in Edgewater to work at the DuPont powder works plant in Pompton Lakes. My description of her work at the plant was based on newspaper accounts from the era and other reports about the working conditions at textile and munitions plants.
Although her mother’s name, Monvilla, is unique, I had some questions about the genealogical records I found for Edna, so her family is entirely fictional. (I did find a passport photo of an Edna Heustis who more or less matches her description, which you can see on my website: www.amystewart.com.) Mrs. Turnbull’s boarding-house is fictional, but based on nonfiction accounts of similar establishments from the era.
Everything that happened to Edna after her arrest is entirely fictional. I owe a great debt to Mary Roberts Rinehart’s wonderful novel The Amazing Interlude for her descriptions of young women preparing to go to France. I was able to correlate her fictional account with many nonfiction accounts to describe how small civic groups came together to sponsor women going overseas—and the way those efforts could fall apart as well-heeled families decided they weren’t actually willing to let their daughters serve.
Edith Wharton did run war relief programs in France during World War I, as did many other private citizens and charities. Eager volunteers did turn up in Paris with little in the way of money or concrete plans, so Edna and Minnie’s situation was not unusual.
Minnie Davis was arrested on January 23, 1916, in Fort Lee, where she and A
nthony Leo were living in a “shanty” on Main Street and posing as man and wife. He really did work aboard a steamship on the Hudson, and she really did work at the Catskill knitting mill until she ran away. Newspapers reported that Leo was part of a “white slave ring,” but there’s little information beyond that.
I was able to find more biographical details about Minnie. Her parents’ and sisters’ names are correct; Edith really did work as a seamstress; and I suspect that the Davises were a blended family because of some discrepancies in ages between family members. Everything else about the family is fictional.
I don’t know exactly how the Minnie Davis/Anthony Leo case was resolved, so the details are largely fictional. I drew from many different nonfiction sources from that time to tell the story of how so-called “white slave” cases were prosecuted. Girls were sent to reformatories for years over morality crimes, with little access to due process or a competent defense. (The right to a free attorney was established through a series of Supreme Court decisions from 1931 to 1966.) Also, it was common at that time for witnesses to a crime (including victims) to be held in jail until the trial. Witnesses received slightly better meals than inmates, as reported in Bergen County newspapers of the day.
Sheriff Heath really was running for Congress as a Democrat, and John Courter was running for sheriff on the Republican ticket. I know very little about Cordelia Heath’s life, so she’s mostly fictional. John Courter’s political stances are mostly conjecture, based on the few insights into his thinking I could find in newspapers from that year. However, his perspective on “morality crimes” is very typical of politicians of his day, and some of his lines about the Mann Act come from other political speeches of that time, as cited below. He was very much a political foe to both Sheriff Heath and Constance.
I also don’t know anything about what Fleurette and Norma were up to at that time. Norma’s interest in pigeons is entirely fictional, but the efforts she and (the fictional) Carolyn Borus were participating in—long-distance flights to prove the worthiness of carrier pigeons for war work, and an effort to send letters to the White House by carrier pigeon—really did happen.