by Amy Stewart
“I’m sorry, my dear,” she said. “I’m conducting an interview at two o’clock, and I was just going out to look for the girl. Can someone else help you?”
“I . . . I am the girl,” I said, realizing at once how foolish I sounded. “I mean, I am Constance Kopp. You wrote to me. About the detective position.”
She made a little gasp that caught in her throat. She rose from her chair, not taking her eyes off me, and walked right up to me. Mrs. Langdon was a petite woman of hardly more than five feet in height, so when she stood in front of me, she looked directly at the button fastened across my breastbone. I took a step back so that she could look me in the eye, but she stepped forward again. I wondered if she was nearsighted. Then she walked around me, slowly, the way one takes in a statue at a museum.
I held my breath. Was this the interview?
She circled back to her desk. There was no other chair in the room, so I remained standing. “I’m sorry, my dear,” she said briskly, giving me one last appraisal over the tops of her spectacles. “You won’t do at all. We’re looking for someone—unobtrusive.”
“Unobtrusive?” I said. “I’ve worn the most ordinary dress, just as you asked.”
She shook her head slowly. “It isn’t your dress, my dear. It’s—well, we can’t have a store detective who stands head and shoulders above all the other shoppers. You’ll be noticed. The thieves will have no trouble describing you to each other. They do talk, you know.”
I didn’t know. “But my size could be an advantage,” I said, trying to sound cheerful and not at all desperate. “I can see above the other ladies. And if you’re trying to catch a pickpocket, surely it would be a help to have a detective with some strength. If someone tried to run away I’d have no trouble keeping hold of them.”
Mrs. Langdon gave a small, polite laugh. “My dear. We aren’t hiring a police officer. I’m not looking for someone to make a scene on the sales floor. We want more of a”—and here she paused to consider her words—“a gentle presence. Watchful, but polite. Discreet.”
It hadn’t occurred to me that I’d be turned down after I’d come all this way. Wasn’t I polite and discreet?
I let my silence hang in the air for just a second too long. Mrs. Langdon rose and opened the door.
“I don’t think we’re what you’re looking for, my dear,” she said, looking up at me with pale blue eyes. “You’re better suited for something more rough and tumble.”
Rough and tumble?
She patted my arm and gestured through the open door. “You’ll find it.”
56
“A GENTLE PRESENCE?” Norma said, outraged. “Are you sure that’s what she said?”
“She thought I would stand out,” I said. “She thought I would be too conspicuous.”
“Isn’t that what a store detective should be?” Fleurette asked. “How else will the thieves know to stay away?”
“It doesn’t work that way.” I was tired of talking about it already, and embarrassed that I’d lost a job that should have been handed to me easily.
In an effort to change the subject, Norma tossed the newspaper at me. “It appears that Sheriff Heath has won over another criminal with his kindness and hospitality.”
SAVED OF PRISON TERM BY SHERIFF
GEORGE EWING OF HACKENSACK, a former convict who was indicted for using the mails to defraud victims throughout the county, was saved from being returned to state prison by Sheriff Heath of Bergen County, who said he thought the convict could be reformed.
Ewing was released from state prison after having served his part of a sentence for theft. He returned to Bergen County and led a good life, said the sheriff. Then he relapsed into his old ways and was arrested.
The sheriff took such a kind interest in him that when the case came up yesterday he appealed to the court, saying that if the prisoner were sentenced to prison he would probably never be reformed. Judge Haight then sentenced Ewing to five months in the Bergen County Jail.
“But that’s good news for us!” I said. “It means that he’s agreed that he won’t claim responsibility for Mr. Kaufman’s crimes. We can go forward with the case.”
“What makes you think he won’t change his mind?” Norma said.
“He agreed to tell the truth if we kept him here in Hackensack, and we’ve done that.”
Norma raised an eyebrow at me. “A criminal has made a promise to tell the truth, and now our case against a violent and unpredictable madman depends upon him. Are you suggesting that we take this to be good news?”
“It was my idea,” I said. “I told the sheriff that if Mr. Ewing really wanted to stay in the Hackensack jail, he should use that as leverage.”
“Well, I knew it all along,” Norma said. “You are good at something.”
“What’s that?”
“Telling Sheriff Heath what to do.”
OVER THE NEXT FEW WEEKS, our case proceeded to trial. Prosecutor Wright called me into his office several times to go over it. The questions struck me as repetitive and unnecessary, but Mr. Wright insisted that we review every detail. Mr. Kingsley, the handwriting expert from New York, was prepared to testify that Mr. Kaufman had written the letters. He also secured a full confession from Marion Garfinkel on the basis of her false signature at the orphanage. Once she saw the way he was planning to put the evidence before a jury, she knew better than to fight the charges. She paid her own bond and was awaiting a sentence from the judge. Because the child had been returned to its mother, it was possible that she, like her brother, would face a fine rather than jail.
When the weather was finally warm enough, Francis and Bessie brought the children out to Wyckoff for what they liked to call “A Day at the Farm.” Francis had instituted this tradition to teach the children the value of hard work, and Bessie went along with it to have an excuse to sit in the shade, kick off her shoes, and let the children run wild. So every year in the spring, when the hens were raising their chicks and there were baby rabbits in the field, we’d spend the day outdoors watching the children chase the animals and ruin their play clothes.
We looked forward to A Day at the Farm more than the children did because we never had to cook. Bessie always insisted that a picnic would be more fun in the countryside anyway, but we all knew the real reason: she didn’t want to eat our cooking any more than we did. The chief object of the day was to make it through Bessie’s wicker hampers: first the stuffed eggs and cucumber sandwiches, then the potato salad, the baked chicken, and aspic, and finally the glorious fruit tarts and peach preserves. This year they’d brought ice cream, and Fleurette made a ginger ale punch that the children drank from Mother’s gilded Sèvres teacups.
We pulled every rug out of the house and spread them on the lawn, then piled on all the pillows and cushions we could find, and from that perch we dedicated ourselves to depleting Bessie’s hampers. Francis was in better spirits than we’d seen him in some time. He’d shaved his beard for the summer and it gave him an air of youthfulness and lightheartedness that was not entirely in keeping with his character.
“You look better without it,” Fleurette said. “You look much younger, and it’s easier to know what you’re thinking.”
“What am I thinking right now?” Francis asked.
Fleurette pulled off the red scarf she’d wrapped around her hair and lay back on a pillow. “You’re thinking of buying an automobile and teaching me to drive it,” she said.
Norma groaned and said, “We’ve been riding around in the sheriff’s wagon, and it has given Fleurette too many ideas, as I feared it would.”
Little Frankie discovered something behind the barn that made him shriek, and Francis jumped up and ran to check on him.
“I hope Henry Kaufman isn’t lurking back there again,” Fleurette mumbled, half asleep.
I couldn’t help but laugh, but Norma took offense. “We must never make a joke out of that man,” she said, and, turning back to Bessie, “Please don’t listen to her. Henry
Kaufman is very nearly out of our lives forever.”
Bessie pushed her plate away and rolled over on a pillow too, arranging her purple flowered dress around her knees. “I’m not worried about Henry Kaufman. I only ever worried about the three of you because I was sure one of you would shoot him, and then we’d have to visit you in jail.”
“Sheriff Heath would never put Constance in jail,” Fleurette said. “He likes her too much.”
“He likes all of us,” I said briskly, “and we owe him a great deal for all he’s done. Although I’m sure he’ll be glad when the trial is over and he can forget all about us.”
Francis came jogging back carrying little Frankie under his arm like a football. Frankie was shrieking and giggling. Lorraine skipped along behind them, holding out her hands. “We found a little blind possum and now we must wash our hands,” she said, seeming to leave out the most interesting part of that story. Lorraine had grown nearly a foot in the last year and was beginning to show a little of Fleurette’s dramatic beauty. But today she was covered in dust and straw from the barn, and around her lips were traces of sticky jam.
“Go and wash yourselves off at the pump,” Bessie said. “Ask your aunt Fleurette to help you.”
Fleurette opened one eye in Lorraine’s direction and let out a gasp of mock horror. She jumped to her feet and took each child by the hand, and soon they were shrieking again at the pump and splashing around in a muddy puddle, having forgotten all about getting clean.
“We were just talking about the trial,” Bessie said to Francis, in a deliberate manner that suggested that she’d been instructed to find out what was going on.
Francis reached in the basket for a lemon tart and said, “What about it?” before pushing half of it into his mouth.
“It’ll all be over next month,” I said. “We expect a short trial and a quick conviction, and then we can all go on with our lives.”
“And then what?” Francis said without looking at me.
I didn’t want to have to give him an accounting of my attempts to find a position for myself. I’d ridden into New York a few times, hoping that Mr. LaMotte would have another photography assignment for me and would be willing to pay me this time. He was never there when I stopped in. I saw him on the sidewalk once, but he appeared to be arguing with a client and he waved me away.
I had even returned to Wanamaker’s and wandered the sales floor, trying to pick out the girl they’d hired to be their store detective. I saw any number of pretty, petite girls in fine spring dresses circling the tables and fingering the goods, but not one of them looked capable of handling pickpockets and thieves.
There were very few positions announced in the paper either. Advertisements for bookkeepers and office clerks appeared every few weeks, but always in the men’s help wanted section, never the women’s. I saw vacancies for housecleaners and cooks, and the mills were always hiring, but none of that would have suited me. I could have taken a stenography course, but there were already three girls running notices each week that they were trained in stenography and looking for positions.
All of this seemed impossible to explain. “I’m looking for something suitable,” I said. “A job to help make ends meet. I’ve been on a few interviews already.”
Francis seemed poised to deliver another lecture, but Bessie put a hand on his arm and he smiled at her and settled back down in the contented manner of a well-fed husband who has submitted to his wife’s charms. She patted him and said, “You girls are going to have such an adventure, I just know it. Constance will find a good place for herself, and then maybe she’ll hear of something that would suit Norma. And who knows what the world has to offer Fleurette? Or what she has to offer the world?”
We all turned at once and looked toward the water pump, where Fleurette had joined the children in a contest to see who could splash the most mud on the other. Both girls had hitched their skirts up around their knees and turned on little Frankie, who had never been more delighted. He dropped into the puddle and grinned at them like the most contented pig in New Jersey.
“Let’s do the world a favor,” Norma said, “and not unleash Fleurette upon it quite yet.”
BY MAY, there was little to do but wait for the trial. I was finally able to get a man out to put new locks on the doors and glaze the broken windows we’d boarded up. Norma expanded the size of her pigeon flock by half again, which gave her an excuse to spend most of her days in the barn fussing with the incubator and keeping the wood stove going. Fleurette took seriously the job of sewing clothes for little Bobby and soon had him outfitted with play clothes, a sailor suit, and a new suit for church. Even Norma took an interest in the boy. On the weekends she brought a basket of pigeons over to Lucy’s and let him watch as she tied bright blue ribbons to their legs and released them. He laughed and clapped as they circled overhead and flew away.
I had plenty of work to do. There were tomatoes and pole beans to plant, fences to repair, and blankets and rugs to be brought outside and beaten until the dust had been driven from them. But the chores were only a distraction from our real problems. Any woman in our position would attach herself to a relation with a spare room and make herself useful. If I couldn’t come up with a better idea, we would have to do the same, and soon.
And then what? Where the years ahead had once seemed vague and unknowable, amorphous in shape and indeterminate in size, after my mother died I began to see a set of decades stacked neatly in front of me like bricks. First came my thirties, already half gone, and beyond that my forties and my fifties, solid and certain. But after that, the bricks started to crumble. My grandmother died at the age of sixty-two, and my grandfather at seventy-one. Then my mother was gone, having succumbed to pneumonia after only just turning sixty herself.
When I allowed myself to think about the brevity of the time ahead of me, and the futility of spending any more of it on cooking and mending and gardening, it frightened me so much that I almost couldn’t breathe.
57
THE TRIAL WAS SET AT LAST FOR EARLY JUNE. We were expected in court on a Tuesday morning and hoped to be finished by Friday. Fearing that the long ride back and forth to Newark would leave us overtired, Sheriff Heath made arrangements for us to stay at the Continental Hotel for the week. On Monday night we rode the train to Newark with an enormous trunk of clothes and a stack of hatboxes taller than the girl who intended to wear them. Fleurette was delirious over the notion of staying at a hotel and had made herself a new dress to honor the occasion, an apricot affair that sagged strangely at the knees in what she called a “bowling pin silhouette.”
“I think you went wrong just south of the waist,” Norma said.
“It’s Parisian,” Fleurette said.
“That didn’t come from Paris.”
“It came from McCall’s, by way of Paris.”
Fleurette did look exquisite in the dress, and she knew it. A porter came running the minute she appeared on the platform and loaded a cart with our luggage. He escorted us across the street to the hotel, where Fleurette swept into the lobby ahead of us, her head cocked slightly to show off her wide straw hat (festooned with what Norma called an “audacious” arrangement of silk roses and dyed feathers). It is no exaggeration to say that every head turned in her direction. Norma and I struggled along behind her, hot and dusty from the trip, looking every bit the part of two spinster aunts unable to keep up with their young charge.
The man at the registration desk made a little bow when he saw her. “Evening, miss. You one of Sparks’s girls?”
“Sparks?”
“She’s our girl,” I said, rushing up behind her. “Miss Constance Kopp and her sisters, under arrangements made by Mr. Robert Heath.”
Norma nudged me, worried, I knew, that I was about to mention the criminal trial. Norma didn’t want anyone at the hotel to know that we were there in connection with the sheriff or the courthouse, believing that we would attract the attention of reporters looking for a sensational
story.
“What’s a Sparks girl?” Fleurette asked.
The desk clerk looked at us nervously. “My mistake, miss. Some—ah—entertainers are lodging with us for the week, and I mistook . . .” He looked down, embarrassed, and shuffled his registration cards. “Here we are! The Misses Kopp.”
Just then the tallest and thinnest man I’d ever seen leaned over the desk next to us and said, in a loud and lively voice, one word: “Sparks.” Fleurette had to lift the brim of her hat to stare up at him, which she did, open-mouthed. He wore a pinstriped suit made of enough yardage to clothe two ordinary men, and when he leaned over the desk to sign his name to the register, the pen looked like it might snap between his long, bony fingers.
He glanced down at the three of us and tipped his hat. “You ladies in town for the show?”
“What show?” Fleurette said, before I could stop her.
“Sparks Circus, miss. A vision of beauty and splendor, just like yourself.” He winked at her and flashed a gold tooth when he grinned.
I took hold of Fleurette’s shoulder, but she was effervescent by now and there was no way of stopping her.
“Are you with the circus?”
He turned to her and made a deep bow. “World’s tallest man,” he said, winking at her as he rose. “Haven’t you heard of me?”
Fleurette was quivering. I’d never seen the girl so excited. Norma shot a worried look at me, but I just shrugged. I couldn’t see how we’d get her away from him unless we picked her up and carried her off.
“Is—is everyone in the circus staying here?” she asked.
He raised an eyebrow to the desk clerk, who looked alarmed at the possibility, and said, “Only a few old friends of Mr. Cooke’s. You know Mr. Cooke, don’t you? Used to be a circus agent. One day he was one of us, and now he’s a hotel proprietor.”