Death in Saratoga Springs

by Charles O'Brien

  To cool down, he went to the hotel’s barroom for beer and dim-witted conversation with its patrons, some of them drink-befuddled even before noon. Their only topic these days was baseball and the prowess of the New York Giants. In a few weeks they would chatter on about the Saratoga track, the thoroughbred horses, and which one would win the Travers Cup.

  The beer worked its magic. Feeling better, he moved from the bar to the billiards room. It was quiet and mostly deserted this time of day. While idly knocking the cue ball around the table, he reflected again on his wife, Rachel. When he married her four years ago, he could hardly have expected her to become virtuous. After all, he had picked her up in a brothel. She was a beautiful, lively creature. Until recently, she had added spice and joy to his life.

  Then Shaw appeared. At first, she called him a dear friend. For months they carried on like brother and sister. He now realized that, while he was in Georgia, they became lovers. Their affair would soon reach the scandalmongers and make him look foolish, a cuckolded husband. “That must stop,” he muttered through clenched teeth. He hit the cue ball with a powerful blow. It flew over the edge of the table, bounced across the marble floor the length of the room, and crashed into the opposite wall. The other players turned and stared at him. He called out, “Sorry,” laid down the cue stick, and left the room.

  He needed to do something to occupy his mind. An old business acquaintance from New York had recently become the hotel’s food manager. It could be useful to renew ties with him. Crake’s company sold tons of meat to the Grand Union Hotel.

  The new manager welcomed Crake into his office and a business conversation ensued. Finally, he said to Crake, “I’d be happy to show you the new equipment in our meat room.” They took the elevator to the basement, where meat cutters were busy with their knives.

  “We’ve installed the latest improvements in electric lighting,” said the manager. “The cutting room used to be a dark place. Now it’s as bright as day. At the same time, we’ve also bought the highest quality of steel knives. Since then, we’ve had far fewer accidents.”

  The manager pointed to one of the meat cutters at work on a side of beef. “The blade of his new boning knife takes the sharpest edge in the business. He’ll show it to you.”

  The meat cutter turned around, the bloody knife in his hand, and locked eyes with Crake. They both started. Crake took a step back. The meat cutter was Karl Metzger, the burly, scowling German who once worked in Crake’s meatpacking plants. They exchanged hostile looks. For a brief moment, a tense silence fell over the men. Then Metzger slowly lowered the knife, as if reluctantly, and returned to his work.

  As they left the basement, Crake said to the manager, “That German, Metzger, is a major troublemaker. He led the union in a strike that nearly ruined my business. You must get rid of him immediately.”

  “I’m grateful for your advice,” said the manager, suddenly concerned. “Up to now, I’ve had no problems with Metzger. He’s a skillful meat cutter and well-liked by the others. But I’ll consider carefully what you’ve said before going to Mr. Wooley, the proprietor.”

  Still searching for a way to pass the time and shaken by his encounter with the German meat cutter, Crake wandered out of the hotel onto Broadway. At midafternoon, the July sun made a promenade uncomfortable even under the street’s arcade of tall elm trees. When Crake saw the sign for Mitchell’s Saloon, he also realized he was thirsty again. At the long mahogany bar, he drank a couple of glasses of beer, then beckoned the barman.

  “Any games going on in there?” Crake eyed a door at the rear of the room.

  The barman studied Crake. “You don’t look like one of those ‘reformers’ who want to close us down.”

  “I take that as a compliment,” said Crake. “I’m a gambling man. The mayor approves of me.” Crake was thinking of Mr. Caleb Mitchell, popular mayor of Saratoga Springs, who owned the saloon and the profitable gambling den in the back room.

  The barman smiled broadly. “His excellency is hard at work in there. Why don’t you see what he has to offer?”

  When Crake walked into the den, Mitchell was observing a crowd of men at a roulette wheel. His eyes immediately caught Crake in a penetrating glance and mouthed a welcome. Crake was soon betting at the wheel. He lost a few dollars and was about to try his luck at poker when Robert Shaw walked in with a beer and sat by himself.

  For a moment they stared at each other. Shaw smirked. Crake’s anger flared up. He approached Shaw and in a quiet, measured voice said, “Last night, you slept with my wife.” He leaned forward and hissed, “I’ll make you pay. You’ll be a dead man before the end of summer.”

  Shaw sipped from his glass and gazed at Crake with contempt.

  As Crake stalked out of the room, he muttered “insolent bastard” and made a mental note to hire Jimmy Gilpin for the job.

  For an hour, he paced back and forth in the hotel garden, mulling over his marriage to Rachel. Then his knees began to pain him. By the time he returned to their cottage, he was in a cold fury, his mind made up. He burst into her room. Dressed for dinner in a shimmering red silk gown, she was standing before the mirror and inspecting her coiffure. Birgitta was at her side looking on. She glanced at Crake, shook her head, and mouthed, “No!”

  For a few moments he mastered his temper and said levelly, “Miss Mattsson, please wait in the parlor. I’ll speak to you later. Now I have something to say to my wife.”

  The maid averted her eyes and walked quickly from the room. Crake closed the door and strode up to his wife. She stood glued to the floor, eyes wide with fear. She flashed a nervous, childlike smile at him.

  “Whore!” he shouted and slapped her so hard that she fell back against the mirror and sent it swinging wildly. “For appearance’s sake, we shall dine together and attend this evening’s concert. After a few more days of pretending marital bliss, we’ll return to New York and consider what to do with our marriage. At the least, I’ll remove you from among the beneficiaries of my will.”

  Crake was swaying and breathing heavily. Gradually, his anger subsided. He muttered, “I apologize for losing my temper and striking you.” He left the room and found the maid in the parlor, tight lipped and pale. As he approached, she seemed to tremble. She had heard everything.

  Crake said, “I acted like a brute. Go to Mrs. Crake and repair the damage. At five, we’ll leave for dinner. You will then be free for the rest of the day. Meanwhile, I’ll collect my wits and finish some legal business.” Crake fixed her in a taut gaze. “I trust you’ll say nothing about this incident.”

  Early that evening, as the orchestra was settling into its chairs, Crake and his wife entered the hotel’s garden. At dinner, his violent outburst in the cottage was put behind them, if not forgotten. He walked slowly with a cane, looking stolidly ahead, lines of pain etched on his face. She forced a sweet smile, fanned her face briskly, and nodded to acquaintances left and right.

  The musicians tuned their instruments. This evening’s conductor, the cellist Victor Herbert, stepped up onto the podium and a hush came over the crowd.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, “we have a special request for the popular song ‘Marching Through Georgia.’ This is the thirtieth year since General Sherman’s glorious campaign during the late war. With us tonight is one of its brave veterans, Captain Jed Crake.”

  The crowd turned toward the captain and applauded.

  He waved his hand, but he didn’t smile. This attention was unexpected and unwelcome. After the war, he had polished his reputation for heroism and had never been challenged. But recently, a former comrade and he had a falling out. Since then, the comrade had grown embittered and had insinuated that Crake’s military record had a dark side. Crake now preferred less limelight.

  Rachel glared at him behind her fan and whispered, “Jed, you should look pleased. People are curious about your experience in Georgia. It must have been exciting and terribly important. After all, you and your comrades brough
t the war to an end and saved the Union.”

  “Nothing glorious about it,” he snarled. “Dirty business. Sherman said it was hell.”

  As the orchestra launched into the tune and the crowd joined in, Captain Crake fell into uneasy thinking. Who had given his name to the conductor and had requested the song? Rachel seemed as surprised as he.

  This wasn’t the first worrisome allusion this summer to his past life. An hour ago, heads turned when he walked into the dining room. At dinner, perfect strangers inquired politely about his private life in New York City, doubt lurking in their voices. Enemies had brought tales about him from the city and were stoking curiosity. His spies in the city had earlier warned him that private detectives were asking questions that linked him to the mysterious disappearance of prostitutes. He’d put a stop to the snooping, but rumors persisted.

  He suffered through the song; but when it finished, he leaned toward his wife. “My arthritis is killing me. I’m going to our rooms for my medicine. I’ll come back as soon as I feel better.” She frowned, then shrugged; but he shuffled away.

  For the summer, he had rented a suite of rooms on the ground floor of one of the hotel’s so-called cottages. At the door he fumbled with the key. His eyesight had failed to the point that he had to feel for the lock. Finally, he got the key in and turned it. “Damn!” he exclaimed. His wife had left the door unlocked. Silly, careless woman! She kept valuable jewelry in her bedside cabinet. Anyone could walk in and steal it.

  He let himself in and went directly to the washroom. The laudanum wasn’t where he had left it. His wife was constantly moving things around and he had to hunt for them. Eventually, he found the drug, prepared a dose, and drank it down. While he waited for its soothing effect, he stretched out on a divan and fell into a fitful sleep.

  Memories from the war came back again to haunt him. Body parts—human and animal—melded into grotesque monsters. Lurid flames leaped from burning buildings. Screams of women and men pierced his ears. A beautiful woman’s defiant face, battered and bruised, loomed up before his eyes. He tried to drive these images away but couldn’t.

  Then he woke up, soaked in sweat. He had no idea how long he slept. The room was dark except for a thin shaft of gaslight slanting through the transom window. Music played in the distance. A floorboard creaked. For a moment he lay still and listened. Someone was in the room.

  He called out, “Anyone there?”

  A board creaked again, this time closer. A dim light from a lantern shone on him. Groggy from the drug, Crake struggled in vain to rise. A shadowy figure approached him, and a spark of light glinted off metal. A searing pain ripped through his chest. Life ebbed from his body.

  CHAPTER 8

  Troubling News

  New York City

  Monday, July 9

  Two days later at midmorning, a pale and agitated aide rushed up to Pamela Thompson. “One of our girls is in trouble.”

  On vacation for two weeks, Pamela was working at St. Barnabas Mission. The first thought to leap to her mind was an unwanted pregnancy. “Who is it?”

  “Francesca Ricci,” the aide replied. “But it’s not what you’re thinking. In Saratoga Springs they say she was trying to steal something and killed a rich man. She’s in jail.” The aide handed Pamela a telegraphed message from Helen Fisk, her friend and patron of St. Barnabas.

  DEAR PAMELA,

  MR. JED CRAKE WAS STABBED TO

  DEATH SATURDAY EVENING IN HIS

  ROOMS AT THE GRAND UNION

  HOTEL. THE POLICE SAY HE

  CONFRONTED MISS RICCI STEALING

  HIS WIFE’S JEWELRY. SHE STABBED HIM

  AND FLED. STOLEN JEWELRY WAS

  FOUND IN HER ROOM. THE POLICE

  ARE HOLDING HER IN THE TOWN

  JAIL. I VISITED HER THIS SUNDAY

  AFTERNOON. SHE ASKED FOR YOU.

  HELEN

  Pamela stared at the message, shocked and incredulous. Her knees began to buckle. She lowered herself into a chair and breathed deeply. Francesca was her ward and a friend, and had lived with her up to a month or so ago.

  There couldn’t be two Jed Crakes. The murdered man had to be the Captain Crake whom Pamela investigated a few months ago. When she last heard of him, he was ill but still alive in New York City. That he should die violently at Francesca’s hand must be a mistake.

  “Would you speak to her mother? Mrs. Fisk sent a copy of the message to her.”

  “Of course.” Still shaken by the news, Pamela followed the aide into a parlor where Signora Ricci was sitting. A slender, careworn widow and too ill to care for Francesca, she had given up the girl to the mission.

  “My daughter, Francesca, wouldn’t murder anyone,” she exclaimed in heavily accented English. “Can you help her?”

  “I’ll try.” She calmed and comforted the anxious mother, then asked if Francesca had reported having any problems in Saratoga Springs. Her occasional notes to Pamela were brief and cheerful.

  “Oh no, she has written that she was pleased with her work and the people were kind to her.”

  Pamela thought that’s what a daughter would write to keep her mother from worrying. “I’ll see what I can do. At the least I can arrange for legal counsel.”

  An exploratory trip to Saratoga Springs was feasible. Prescott, her boss, was at his cabin in the Berkshires near his son, Edward. She didn’t know when he would return to the city, but he wouldn’t mind what she did on her own time.

  A single woman in Saratoga, even a forty-year-old widow like herself, would feel awkward by herself as a private investigator. At least at the start, she would need a companion. Fortunately, Harry Miller, her fellow investigator in Prescott’s firm, also had vacation time and might be willing to join her.

  Miller’s home was a room in a boardinghouse on Irving Place near the Prescott office. With a compliant smile, his landlady showed her into a small parlor and left to call him. She knew that Pamela and Miller worked together solving crimes, a legal but disreputable business.

  He entered the parlor in rumpled clothes and glassy eyes.

  “Harry! Have you been studying?” Pamela put a teasing reproach in her voice. He devoted nearly every free hour to his law books and new investigative techniques.

  “I confess to the crime. What brings you here?”

  She explained Francesca Ricci’s predicament, then showed a sketch of the girl. “Would you help me investigate her situation in Saratoga Springs? I apologize for this short notice.”

  He stared at the portrait. “She’s a beautiful young woman. When did you learn to sketch?”

  “In school,” she replied. “I sketched scenes when I traveled abroad and also portraits for friends. I stopped when Jack died and my life fell apart. Recently, Francesca encouraged me to take it up again. She wanted a portrait of herself to give to her mother.”

  “That speaks well of her. She sounds like a good daughter and might be unjustly accused.”

  He hesitated, apparently torn between his precious hours of study and this opportunity to save a person from a fate he himself had once suffered. His years in Sing Sing left raw wounds in his spirit.

  Finally, he said, “We’ll take the first train tomorrow to Saratoga Springs, speak to Francesca, and assess her situation. Charged with murdering a rich man, you say? Clearing her won’t be easy.”

  In the coach to Grand Central Station the next day, Harry asked, “Is your ward Francesca Ricci a likely murderer?”

  “I doubt it. She’s sixteen, poor, and foolish at times, but she’s not violent. Her father died in an accident at a construction site shortly after her birth. Poverty and illness overwhelmed his widow, and she couldn’t give Francesca a proper upbringing. Still, she grew up to be a bright, musical, and beautiful girl.”

  “Any criminal inclinations?”

  “A few. She often skipped school to sing for pennies on the street and to indulge in petty shoplifting. Several months ago, Macy’s detective caught her stealing a bracelet a
nd handed her over to the police. I managed to save her from prison, but the arrest went into her record. A court placed her in my custody with the warning that if she failed to reform, she would be sent to a house of detention.”

  “Does she take that warning seriously?”

  “I believe she does. Some of her friends have gone to prison, so she knows what it’s like. She has told me that she detests the police for their roughness and disrespect toward her and other Italians.”

  Harry grimaced. “So, what’s new?”

  “I must admit she might have provoked them. Since she moved into my apartment, her behavior has improved, especially her attendance at school and her grade reports. I tutor her. We sing Italian songs together and she sings in church. So, when she had an opportunity to work at the Grand Union Hotel for the summer, I recommended her to the management.”

  A skeptic through training and experience, Harry shook his head. “Nonetheless, we can’t declare that she’s innocent of this crime. Before living with you, she seemed vain and undisciplined, even willful. True, you’ve straightened her out. But, in Saratoga, she might have fallen back into her old ways and robbed Crake, then impulsively killed him to escape going to prison.”

  Pamela inwardly shuddered. Harry could be right. Under certain circumstances, anyone could fall from grace. Nonetheless, she would trust her own reading of Francesca’s character and rely on the law’s presumption of innocence.

  As they boarded the train for Saratoga Springs, Pamela remarked to Harry, “I’m anxious about this trip. We’ll have to contact Francesca promptly. She’s virtually alone in that bustling town—the journalist Nellie Bly calls it Sin City.”

  “What’s worse,” Harry added, “the hotel will want a quick, simple resolution of the case. The police will hold her previous poverty and delinquency against her, and will pressure the girl to confess. She might soon face the prospect of years in a state prison—or worse.”