Crimson Snow

by Jeanne Dams

  It is difficult to talk with a lump of hard candy in one’s mouth. Hilda pulled up another bucket and the two of them sat in a silence broken by the snufflings and stampings of the horses in the stable and the traffic sounds of a bustling city outside. Someone had a sleigh out; its harness bells jingled merrily. Farther away, probably on Michigan Street, the horn of one of the new electric buggies sounded. The horses stirred uneasily. They knew what that sound meant, and they didn’t like those uncanny machines that moved by themselves.

  The silence was companionable, but Hilda and Erik grew cold, sitting still. The stable, though heated somewhat by the bodies of the horses, was certainly not warm. Erik was the first to stand. He moved to one of the stalls and began to curry the horse.

  “What are you going to do about it?” he asked, a challenge in his voice.

  That was the question Hilda had feared. She swallowed hard.

  “Erik, I cannot do anything. The police—”

  “Huh!”

  The syllable summed up Erik’s opinion of the South Bend police. Hilda felt much the same way, but she couldn’t say so now. “They are better now, under Mayor Fogarty. They will do all they can. This kind of crime—” She stopped, suddenly aware that she had said too much. She wanted, if possible, to keep the sordid details from Erik.

  He was sharp. “What kind of crime?” he asked instantly.

  “What do you mean?”

  Well, he would hear from others, anyway. Perhaps it was better that it come from her. She would tell him as much as she could. “It was—very violent. I am sorry, Erik. I did not want you to know. Miss Jacobs was badly beaten. Probably some man had too much to drink and—and saw her and tried to make her talk to him. She was pretty, was she not?”

  Erik nodded and moved to the next stall. He didn’t look at Hilda.

  “He must have wanted her to—to walk with him. And when she would not,” Hilda continued hurriedly, “he became angry, because he had been drinking, and hit her. Perhaps he was a tramp or some such person. The police are good at solving that kind of crime. That is what I meant.”

  Erik ignored most of what she had said. “I like tramps,” he said. “They’re nice to me. They wouldn’t do a thing like this.”

  It was certainly true that some hoboes had once been kind to Erik. “Some of them are good, but not all are like the ones you knew. And when a man has been drinking, he may do anything.”

  “Patrick drinks,” retorted Erik. “He doesn’t do bad things.”

  “Patrick is Irish. He—”

  “Sure, and I’m from the good auld sod, and what of it?” said a genial voice in stage Irish.

  “Patrick!” Hilda jumped to her feet. “I am glad to see you! Erik and I have been talking about Miss Jacobs. I told him it was probably a drunken man who thought she was pretty and wanted to walk with her.” She put the slightest of stresses on the last few words and looked warningly at Patrick. “I am sure that the police will soon find him.”

  “It’s to be hoped they will,” said Patrick soberly. “It’s a sad day in South Bend when a respectable young woman can’t walk a few blocks of a winter’s night without being struck down by some scum of a man.” He hesitated a moment. “Hilda, I know you don’t like me tellin’ you what to do, but you’ll be careful, won’t you? The dark comes early in winter.”

  “I will, I promise, Patrick. I am almost never out at night. You know how strict Mr. Williams is about the rules.”

  “I do, and it’s glad I am of it at a time like this. No decent woman is safe while a man like that walks the streets.”

  Hilda shook her head slightly and flicked her eyes toward Erik. Patrick grimaced and nodded. Erik probably knew exactly what they meant. He was thirteen, after all, and a farm boy was no stranger to the facts of life. But there were things one did not talk about.

  “Hilda breaks the rules all the time,” said Erik, sticking to his point. “She can get away from that Mr. Williams any time she wants.”

  “But I cannot, Erik. Not anymore. I told you, he watches me day and night. Now that Norah is gone and the new waitress is bad at her duties, he is in a terrible temper. I dare not disobey him.”

  “You’re out now,” Erik pointed out. “And you’re seeing Patrick. The old stick-in-the-mud wouldn’t like that, and neither would Mama.”

  “It is my half day. He cannot object. As for Mama, she does not dislike Patrick as much as she did. She knows how much he did for you.”

  “Oh, she’s grateful to him, but you should hear what she says about you maybe marrying him. She’d turn over in her grave, she says.”

  “She is not in her grave,” said Hilda impatiently.

  “Anyway, I don’t know why you don’t just marry him and leave that old Williams. You don’t like your job anymore. And if you left, you could do what you wanted, and find out who killed my teacher!”

  They were back to that. Hilda shook her head wearily. “Erik, I maybe helped the police a few times before, but it is different now. No, my job is not as good now, and I do not always like it, but I cannot leave. I need the money. And I cannot marry Patrick, as you well know, and I cannot become involved in a murder. Mama would really be upset if I did that, and Mr. Williams would discharge me.” She sneezed twice, and sniffled. Erik had her handkerchief.

  “Here, me girl, you have to get in out of the cold. Erik, Gray Boy’s been favoring his right foreleg. Likely he’s picked up a stone and all this ice has packed it in under his shoe. You’d best see to it before he goes lame. And after they’re all fed, come in and have some supper yourself. I’m going to see your sister home.”

  “Huh! You’re not supposed to leave the firehouse when you’re on duty. You just want to talk to her alone.”

  “I want to see that she’s safe! Do as you’re told, me boy, and less lip from you, now.” He gave Hilda his arm and led her from the stable.

  The new firehouse had a visitor’s parlor, a rather bare, comfortless apartment, but a place where the mothers, wives, and sisters of the firemen might be entertained. Patrick stretched a point in Hilda’s favor that cold afternoon and led her into the parlor.

  “The fire’s not much, but it’s warmer in here than out there, at any rate,” he said. “I think we need to talk a little before you go. Sit you down and tell me what Erik knows. This is a bad business, me girl.”

  “It is,” she said gravely. “He has not yet read everything the paper said, and he may not. The print is small and the words are big, some of them, and he does not yet read English easily. I do not want him to know—everything. At least not yet.”

  “He’ll know soon enough,” said Patrick. He sighed for the loss of innocence, but forgot Erik with his next breath. He looked at Hilda, his face set in an expression foreign to his cheerful nature. “I meant it, Hilda, what I said back there. It’s not safe for you to be out alone, at least not after dark. If there’s someone goin’ about preyin’ on women, I want you inside out of harm’s way.”

  “Yes, but Patrick! I am safe enough at Tippecanoe Place, but what about my mother and my sisters? They do not live where they work, not any of them. Mama and Elsa, they work at the shirt factory together and can come home together, but Birgit and Freya and Gudrun, they all work different places. Birgit, she is very young yet, and maybe safe, but Freya and Gudrun…and it gets dark so early, these winter months.”

  “Erik could see Birgit home.”

  “Erik is only a child himself! And—and sometimes it is also bad for boys—”

  “Erik has good reason to know about boys being preyed upon by some men. He’s wary.”

  “I know. It is a great pity.”

  “It is that. But Sven—couldn’t he see to the other girls?”

  “I do not see how. He works late hours at the paint shop. Now that Studebaker’s have begun to make automobiles, they need skilled painters even more than before. He cannot leave his work to see his sisters home.”

  “Then we’ll have to do something. Us firemen,
I mean. One of us could leave, maybe take several girls home. And the police— they’d have to help, too. Off-duty policemen, maybe.”

  “Oh, Patrick, it cannot be done! There are many, many young woman working in South Bend. This is a big city! And they do not all live in the same part of town. No, the only way they will be safe is when this man is caught, when he is safe in jail.”

  Patrick sighed. He knew Hilda was right. “And if it’s some tramp, just passin’ through, they may never catch him.”

  Hilda nodded. “But Patrick, it is almost better to think that it might have been a tramp. For if it was someone who knew Miss Jacobs…then it might be almost anyone. Someone we know.”

  In her mind was the image of Mr. Barrett, standing gray and shaking at the front door of Tippecanoe Place.

  Much excitement over the murder

  and bloodhounds will be put on the

  trail of the murderer.

  —South Bend Tribune

  January 22, 1904

  4

  THEY HURRIED WHEN they left the firehouse. It was no weather for a leisurely stroll. The wind blew them along, cutting through their garments like a knife and causing them to slide and stumble over the rough, icy sidewalks. “Goin’ to snow again,” shouted Patrick over the wind. Hilda, out of breath, simply nodded.

  The sky had been dark with clouds all day, and by the time Patrick delivered Hilda to the back door of Tippecanoe Place night had fallen, though it was barely five o’clock. “I hate to leave you,” said Patrick, taking her hand.

  “I, too,” said Hilda. She would usually have made a sharp retort about both of them needing to tend to business. Tonight she would have liked to cling to Patrick, regardless of propriety or her pride. She looked up at him, her expression so soft that Patrick would have kissed her then and there if the back door had not opened.

  “Hilda! It’s after nightfall. You know the rules. Come inside at once!”

  “She’s safe with me, sir,” said Patrick, his uncompromising tone at variance with the deference of his words. “I’ll come in for a moment, by your leave. We’ve still a little time, I’m thinkin’, before Hilda must go back to work.” He gave the butler a determined look and held Hilda’s arm close at his side.

  Mr. Williams conceded with bad grace. “Come in, then, if you must. For five minutes. And mind you behave yourselves, the both of you.” He stomped away muttering under his breath about what the world was coming to. Patrick grinned and followed Hilda into the servants’ room, where a fire blazed in the grate.

  Mrs. Sullivan, who also had Wednesday afternoons off and always served a cold buffet supper on that evening, was snoring in her rocking chair, the kitchen cat asleep on her lap. Mr. Williams’s bulldog, Rex, slumbered near the fire, his paws working as he chased something in his dreams. Elsie, the scullery maid, was mending one of her aprons while Anton sat at the table working on the ship model he was building out of toothpicks and other oddments. He raised his head and nodded in greeting, then bent back to his absorbing task. Maggie, the new waitress, wasn’t in the room.

  “It doesn’t look as if anything bad could ever happen,” Hilda murmured to Patrick. “It looks safe.”

  “It’s safe enough,” said Patrick. “So’s a cage.”

  Hilda sighed. “Yes. It is a cage, but it is comfortable.”

  “Hilda, I’ve somethin’ to tell you,” Patrick said in a low, urgent voice, leading her to the corner of the room. No one was paying any attention to them. “I didn’t want to talk about it in front of Erik, and it was too blowy and wild on the way home. I might be gettin’ a new job.”

  “Patrick! What?”

  “Me Uncle Dan’s offered me a place in his dry goods business. You know Sean died last year.”

  Hilda nodded. Daniel Malloy’s older son, Sean, had succumbed to tuberculosis the previous winter.

  “Cousin Mary lives in Chicago with her husband, and there’s no hope me uncle can bring Clancy in. That boyo’s left town and not likely to come back. So Uncle Dan’s been thinkin’ about it, he says, and I look a likely lad and willin’ to work and—well, he’s offered to make me a partner.”

  This was stunning news. “A partner! You mean—but you would have to buy your share of the business, yes? And where would you find the money?”

  “He’s givin’ it to me, Hilda. Or—to us.”

  Hilda found herself without breath to speak.

  “He says you and me together, we saved his life,” Patrick went on. “And Aunt Molly says the same. You know they’ve been treatin’ me pretty much like a son ever since that time he got kidnapped and you found him, and all, and…”

  Patrick ran down. There was a great deal more he wanted to say, but not in front of other people, no matter how sleepy or preoccupied they might be.

  As for Hilda, her mind was in too much of a whirl to know what to say. If this miracle was really true, the financial barrier to their marriage was gone. But there were still the prejudice of both families to be overcome, and the religious differences.

  “Patrick, I can’t—I don’t—I must—”

  The clock on the mantel gave a preliminary click, cleared its throat, and struck the half hour.

  “Patrick, you must go! You’ve been away an hour, nearly. Mr. Williams will be angry, and the fire chief, also.”

  “We have to talk about this.” His eyes, serious and determined, looked into hers.

  “Yes. But not until I have had a little time. It is—Patrick, it is wonderful news, I t’ink, but it is too much. I must—” She waved her hands in the air, frustrated by her inability to express her complex feelings.

  Patrick understood. It was only in moments of high stress that Hilda lost control of her accent. He dared not kiss her when Mr. Williams might walk in at any time, but he took her hand and gave it a hard squeeze before striding out of the room.

  Hilda was never able, later, to remember anything she did for the rest of that evening. Presumably she went about her usual evening duties, checking the fires to make sure they had enough coal, tidying rooms, turning down beds. Probably she ate some supper, for Mrs. Sullivan would have been highly indignant if she had not.

  Her mind was not at Tippecanoe Place at all. It wandered from the firehouse to the parks, Howard Park where she went with Patrick in the summer to picnic on the grass, Leeper Park where he sometimes rented a boat and took her on the river. They skated there in winter, too, on the duck pond. Then afterwards there were the long walks home, the talks, the arguments—for they were both stubborn and opinionated.

  Would they argue when they were married? Married. Hilda could picture herself in wedding finery, perhaps a white gown, or perhaps traditional Swedish wedding garb, going into the church on the arm of her brother Sven…but there the image faded. What church? Her Lutheran church, or Patrick’s Catholic one? She couldn’t, no, she simply couldn’t enter a Catholic church. They were idolaters, praying to saints…but they didn’t act like bad people. Norah, and Patrick’s aunt and uncle, they were just ordinary, nice people. And Patrick…her dreams grew rosy again. A house of their own, a neat little new house that she could keep clean with almost no effort. Children, pretty little girls with her blond hair and boys looking like Patrick—only without his dashing mustache, of course—and family meals…and her thoughts darkened. Would her family ever accept him? Would his family ever accept her?

  Erik liked Patrick and didn’t care about his religion. And Sven was coming around…but Mama was another story…and Patrick’s mother…

  She found herself, at the end of the day, in bed without remembering that she had climbed the stairs. She wanted, with a longing that was almost hunger, to talk everything over with Norah. In the old days they would have sat on the bed in Hilda’s room and talked and giggled and made plans.

  The grandfather clock in the great hall below had struck three before Hilda finally fell asleep.

  She was awakened by a pounding on her door and Maggie’s harsh voice. “It’s past six. I
f you’re sick you’d better say so. If you’re gettin’ up, you’re half an hour late, and Old Sourpuss’ll have your hide.”

  Hilda pushed aside the blankets, washed her face in the icy water in her basin, and dressed as fast as she could. The room was so cold she could see her breath. Anton had only just fired up the furnace, and it took a long time for the heat to reach the top story.

  Shivering, yawning, and out of sorts, she hastened down the long winding flights of stairs to begin her day’s work.

  Her first duty, before her breakfast, was to wash away the ever-present soot in the reception rooms on the first floor: the great hall, the morning room, the drawing room, and the rest. Winter and summer, it was the same. Hilda could never decide which was the worst culprit: the coal-burning furnace that warmed the house, or the coal-burning power plants for the city’s many factories, or the coal fires in the fireplaces. The drawing room, with its ivory paint and light-colored wallpaper, was the biggest job. Every sooty speck showed. Hilda was usually particular about that room. She was proud of it, as she was proud of the whole mansion.

  This morning it got short shrift. Her mind dwelt on other things, and most of them were not pleasant.

  It wasn’t fair of Patrick to drop such a bombshell and then just leave, she thought as she beat a cushion furiously and returned it to its place on a window seat. If there wasn’t time to talk about it properly, he should have kept his peace. How was a girl supposed to get her work done when her mind was in such turmoil?

  Of course it was all impossible. They both knew perfectly well that they couldn’t marry. Her thoughts started down the same old dreary path: She would have to give up her job. But she didn’t like her job anymore. And if Patrick was making good money, she might not need to work.

  “Hah!” she said aloud. “An Irish immigrant never makes that much money.”

  Some of them did, though. Daniel Malloy, Patrick’s uncle, was rich, and he’d been just as poor as anyone when he came to America. Then there were the politicians she’d heard of in New York, the organization called Tammany Hall. She’d read both good and bad things about them in the newspapers (depending on which paper she was reading, the Republican Tribune or the Democratic Times), but all agreed that they were rich.