Secrets on 26th Street

by Elizabeth McDavid Jones

  “And you didn’t notify the police because you were thinking she was here.” She paused. “You poor girls, all alone in that city. I’ll be on the first train out this morning.”

  “No need for that.” Susan’s voice came out wooden. What could her frail old Aunt Blanche possibly do to help them? “We’re not alone. There’s a boarder staying with us. She’s taking care of us.”

  As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Susan shivered. Bea taking care of them? Hardly. She’d been lying to them since the day she arrived.

  As Susan hung up the phone, an even more chilling thought struck her. Aunt Blanche said she hadn’t heard from Mum in over a year, but Mum had told the girls that Aunt Blanche asked her to visit.

  That meant that Mum had lied to them, too.

  Sick with that realization, Susan dragged out of the drugstore, climbed the battered steps to the fourth-floor landing, and dragged down the long, dreary hallway to their flat.

  She found Helen with her arms plunged in dishwater. Helen turned as Susan came in. “I washed up the dishes so you wouldn’t have to, Susie, and took Lucy to the Cochrans’. Who was that on the telephone?” Her voice was both eager and anxious.

  Susan told Helen about her conversation with Aunt Blanche. After she finished, Helen was very still. Through the open window, Susan was aware of traffic moving in the street below—automobiles, delivery wagons, a coal truck rumbling by.

  “What do we do now?” Helen asked. Susan could see in Helen’s eyes the same dread she felt.

  “We’re not going to school,” Susan said firmly. “We have to find out where Mum went on Saturday morning—whether she was headed for the train station or somewhere else.”

  “But Mum’s the only one who could tell us that.”

  “Maybe not. Maybe someone saw Mum that morning and could tell us at least which way she was walking. That would give us a place to start, anyway.”

  “There’s tons of people who could’ve seen her. We can’t possibly ask them all.”

  “No, but we can ask the one person who knows everything that happens on 26th Street.”

  “Mrs. Flynn,” said Helen.

  Mrs. Flynn invited the girls in with only a mild look of surprise on her face. She didn’t even ask them why they weren’t in school. The Flynn kitchen, though identical to the O’Neals’ kitchen one floor below, looked half the size with so many people stuffed into it. Four of the Flynn boys were on the floor playing with blocks of wood. One of the twins was crawling on the floor chasing dust balls. Baby Bridget was sleeping in a cradle in the corner. A woman in a flowered housedress stood over a large wooden bowl peeling carrots and plunking them into a pot bubbling on the stove. Her complexion was as red as Mrs. Flynn’s. She looked, in fact, like a younger, thinner version of Mrs. Flynn.

  “This is my sister Flossie from Boston,” said Mrs. Flynn. “She’s been telling me for months she was coming to visit. She finally decided to make good on her word.” Mrs. Flynn’s eyes were dancing as she returned to a pile of potatoes she was paring at the table.

  Flossie wiped her hands on a dishrag and greeted the girls. “Bertie’s been promising to take me to meet the neighbors, but she’s kept me so busy whisking me around town, I’ve scarce had a chance to meet anyone.”

  The last thing Susan wanted to do was chat, but she swallowed her impatience and tried to be polite. “When did you arrive?” she asked.

  Mrs. Flynn answered for her sister, peeling all the while. The knife in her hand flew, shaving curly skins that dropped—plunk—into the metal garbage pail at her side. “She came in Saturday on the 6 A.M. And I was at the station at five to pick her up. Those train schedules are never accurate, as you lassies know, and I wasn’t having my baby sister sitting alone at that station waiting for me.”

  Flossie was saying something, but Susan didn’t hear her. If Mum had been telling the truth about going to the train station on Saturday morning, then Mrs. Flynn might have seen her there.

  Susan exchanged glances with Helen, and she could tell Helen was thinking the same thing. Susan’s heart was beating so loudly she could hardly hear herself speak. “You didn’t happen to run into our mother, did you, Mrs. Flynn? At the station?”

  “I didn’t, lass. I must have missed her. Her friends arrived on the 6 A.M., too, did they?”

  Susan thought she must have heard wrong. “I’m not sure what you mean, Mrs. Flynn.”

  “Why, the friends we saw your mother with at Hearn’s.” Hearn’s was a huge department store on 14th Street that had a café inside and a fountain in the entry. “I thought you were saying she picked them up at the station on Saturday morning.” Peelings fell one after another into the pail. Plunk, plunk, plunk.

  Susan struggled to speak. “You saw Mum at Hearn’s? When?”

  “Let me see …” Mrs. Flynn scratched her double chin. “I showed Flossie the Grand Opera House first, on 23rd; then we went to Macy’s. What time was it, Flossie, when we got to Hearn’s? Around ten?”

  “Aye, I think so.” Flossie turned to Susan. “Your ma was sitting at a fancy table in the café, having tea with her friends, I’m remembering.”

  Mrs. Flynn picked up the story. “She acted startled to see me, she did, then like she barely knew me. If I didn’t know your mum, I’d have thought she was ashamed of me. What was she doing with those hoity-toity society women, anyway? That one lady had her pug dog dressed in a sweater and was feeding it cake, like ’twas a person. I’ve never seen the like.” Mrs. Flynn sniffed and threw a peeling into the pail—hard, as if for emphasis. It thumped against the side of the pail.

  The sound echoed in Susan’s head. A pug dog with a sweater. An intense pressure was building in her chest. That was Bea’s society woman, the one Susan had seen her with at the post office. It had to be.

  Suddenly Susan felt weak in the knees. She was short of breath, and she could barely force words out of her mouth. “Well, Mrs. Flynn,” she managed. “We have to be going. We’ve got some things we need to do for Mum.”

  Helen followed Susan’s lead. “A pleasure meeting you, Miss Flossie.” Helen always remembered her manners, even when Susan didn’t.

  “We’ll come again when we can stay,” Susan added, hurrying Helen out the door.

  “Aye, do that,” called Mrs. Flynn after them, “and bring your mum with you.”

  The slam of the door bounced off the green, blistered walls of the hall. Helen started to speak. “Shhh,” Susan said, and took her by the hand to the stairway landing. Through the small window, smudged with dirt, they had a foggy view of the clutter of wash poles and fences in the yard five stories below.

  Helen looked as if she was about to cry. “Susie?” Helen’s voice quivered. “Where is Mum? Will she ever come home?”

  Helen looked so small and forlorn, a wave of protectiveness washed over Susan. “Sit down, sweetie,” she said. She pulled Helen down onto the top stair and hugged her close. “Of course Mum will come home,” she promised, trying, for Helen’s sake, to sound confident. Inside, all Susan felt was uncertainty … and fear. She hugged Helen tighter.

  At that moment there was a scuffling sound on one of the landings below—someone coming up the stairs. From the top of the stairwell where the girls sat, there was a clear view straight down to the foyer. They could see a hat ascending the first flight of stairs—someone wearing a hat, a brimless one with huge lavender silk flowers. Susan recognized the hat; it was one of Bea’s.

  Susan turned to Helen and put her fingers to her lips. “Don’t move,” she mouthed. If they scrambled now to get out of sight, Bea was certain to see them. If they sat very quietly and if Bea didn’t happen to glance up, maybe she wouldn’t notice them.

  Susan needn’t have worried. Bea didn’t glance right or left, up or down, as she came up the stairs. She was shuffling, moving very slowly, just like she had last Saturday night. And she was talking to herself, mumbling, though Susan couldn’t make out anything she said. Susan even heard a funny, s
trangled sound she thought might be a sob. Helen must have heard the same thing; she shot Susan an anxious look. Susan practically held her breath as Bea paused at the landing and fumbled in her pocket for her key.

  Don’t let her look up, don’t let her look up, Susan prayed.

  Then Bea moved out of sight, into the twilight of the fourth-floor hall. Her footsteps thudded down the hall, slow and heavy—then stopped. Susan listened for the door to close. At last, she heard it. Bea was inside the flat.

  Susan sighed. The tension drained from her muscles, partly because Bea hadn’t seen them, mostly because she had reached a decision about what she was going to do.

  “Did you hear Bea crying?” Helen asked. Her voice brimmed with concern. “I wonder what was the matter with her.”

  “I don’t know.” Susan purposely made her voice hard. “I don’t care right now. I’m fed up with Bea. There’s no doubt in my mind now that Bea knows something about Mum’s disappearance. And it’s clear Bea’s not going to tell us what she knows. So I’ve thought of another way to get the truth from her.”

  “How, Susie?”

  “I’ll let her lead me to it. When she comes out of our flat, I’m going to follow her.”

  CHAPTER 11

  BEA’S JOB

  Susan rushed down the stairs to the street and hurried to the corner, careful to stay out of sight should Bea happen to glance out the window onto 26th Street. Susan had told Helen to go to the Cochrans’ and wait. She was afraid it would be too conspicuous for both of them to try to trail Bea. Susan lingered at the drugstore, pretending to look at postcards, for what seemed like a very long time. Finally she saw Bea come out of the tenement and turn toward Ninth Avenue. Susan couldn’t believe her luck; Bea was still wearing that outlandish hat. She would be easy to follow. Careful to keep her distance, Susan dogged Bea down the avenue twelve blocks to 14th Street.

  This was Chelsea’s business district, lined with office buildings and fancy department stores. Macy’s was here, A.T. Stewart’s, and Hearn’s. Bea disappeared into a tall building with arched windows. Susan, waiting outside, measured the seconds. If she followed too soon, Bea might see her; if she waited too long, she would lose Bea entirely. Susan waited as long as she dared, then ducked inside, but it was too late. There was no sign of Bea in the foyer or on the staircase. Bea must have taken the elevator.

  Susan stuck her head through the bars of the elevator cage. “Did a woman go up just now?” she asked the attendant. He was wearing a red and black uniform and white gloves.

  “I take women up all day long,” the man sniffed.

  “This woman had a British accent. And a funny-looking lavender hat.”

  “Ah, yes, that woman went to the tenth floor, I believe.”

  “Can you take me there, please?”

  “That’s my job.”

  The operator closed the bars and pulled a lever. The elevator jerked upward, and Susan watched the floors speed by. Finally the elevator reached Floor Number 10.

  Susan stepped out into a long hall lined with doors. How would she ever figure out which room Bea had entered?

  Then Susan saw that most of the doors had name-plates. Down the hall she went, scanning the plates for something that might tell her which door was the right one. Lloyd and Lloyd, Attorneys-at-law. Schneider and Sons. Jeffrey P. Whitehead, Accountant. And then she saw it—Committee for Woman Suffrage!

  With a mixture of apprehension and excitement, Susan pushed the door open a crack and peered in. The reception room was empty, but she heard voices coming from an inner office behind a door that was slightly ajar. The voices were female, all of them. One she recognized. It was Bea.

  Susan stepped into the reception room and closed the door behind her. Now she could hear most of the conversation, but she couldn’t figure out what the women were talking about. Something about some friends of theirs who were in trouble. Then Susan realized—they were discussing the suffragists who’d been arrested at the rally and jailed.

  “The organization is getting valuable publicity from this,” someone said. “We used to get scarcely a mention in the papers. Now we’re on the front page every day.”

  “And it’s favorable publicity. People are outraged at the way our women are being treated by the authorities. Tammany Hall charging them with inciting a riot and trying to slap long prison sentences on them—it’s ridiculous,” said someone else.

  “And it’s not that our sisters aren’t willing to serve prison time for the cause,” said a third voice. “You know they are; we’ve all done it before. It’s just so encouraging to see that the citizens of New York are on our side. People see the Tammany bosses as the underhanded villains they are.”

  Then Susan heard Bea speak. “Yes, yes, the publicity will help us—that’s clear.” Susan thought she heard impatience in Bea’s voice. “But a problem’s arisen from the rally—a serious problem.”

  Bea sounded so grave and so urgent, Susan wondered what kind of problem she could be talking about. She strained to hear what Bea would say next.

  “You remember the friend I told you about,” Bea went on, “the one who had so much potential for aiding the cause?”

  A chorus of voices rose in acknowledgment; yet, over the noise, Susan could hear her heart pounding against her chest. Was Bea talking about Mum?

  Bea continued slowly, as if each word were painful to pronounce. “We were near the front of the crowd when the violence broke out. In the commotion, we got separated, and I lost sight of her in the crowd. I was pushing forward to find her when I was set upon by a policeman with a club, and I took a nasty beating before I could break away. By then, my friend had completely disappeared. When I couldn’t find her after the crowd dispersed, I was certain she’d been arrested and carted away to jail, but—”

  Jail! Mum arrested and taken to jail.

  The room began closing in on Susan. Her throat felt tight. Suddenly all the scattered pieces that had made no sense fell together in Susan’s mind. The mysterious bits of conversation between Mum and Bea. Mum’s reaction to Kathleen’s being fired and the argument over Kathleen’s stand on suffrage. Bea’s urging Mum to “do more for us.” Mum’s strange meeting with the society ladies at Hearn’s. And most telling of all, the connection between Bea’s letter and Mum’s disappearance.

  Susan couldn’t bear to stay in the room one minute longer. Fighting the urge to run, she crept out of the room, but the outer door creaked as she closed it.

  “Who’s there?” one of the voices called from the inner office.

  Panicking, Susan fairly jumped into the hall and tripped over a loose floor tile. She was on her feet in an instant. Behind her, she heard Bea calling her name. She hesitated, only for a second, but that was long enough for Bea to catch up with her.

  “What are you doing here?” Bea asked. Her expression was pained.

  “Maybe I should ask you the same question,” Susan flung back. “This isn’t the Nabisco factory, is it, Bea?”

  “I can explain that—”

  “With more of your lies?”

  Bea looked stricken. “Susan, I had to have a cover for my work. You don’t understand the opposition we’re up against, from blokes like Lester Barrow I couldn’t very well pop into your flat and announce I was here to organize your neighborhood for suffrage.”

  “Hold on. What do you mean?”

  “We need the working class, Susan. We can’t win the vote without their support. The movement’s been upper and middle class until now, and it’s failed. We need the masses, the immigrants, the working people. And the working class will only listen to their own.

  “That’s why I was sent to find someone to lead them from their own class—like your mother—to win them over. Me, a blue-blooded Brit, they’d never listen to. So I needed to go among you, with a cover, until I could find those leaders. Working at the factory was my cover. I wouldn’t have lied to you without reason, Susan.”

  Susan’s mind was a jumble; she was
trying to comprehend what Bea was saying to her, but all she could think about was the anguish Bea had put her through. “What was your reason for lying about where Mum was?”

  A look of distress flashed across Bea’s face, and Susan read guilt in Bea’s eyes. Susan blinked back sudden tears. Deep down, against all the evidence, a part of her had kept on hoping that Bea’s deceptions would somehow turn out to be a simple mistake. Now Bea’s guilty face had destroyed that hope.

  Bea opened her mouth to say something, but Susan stopped her. “Just tell me one thing, Bea. Where is my mother?” Susan knew the answer now, but she wanted to hear Bea say it. To hear Bea tell her the truth just once.

  Bea was silent for a long time. When she finally answered, her voice was quiet and small. “Oh, Susan, I don’t know where she is.”

  Another lie. Susan’s throat ached. “I heard what you said in there. About what happened to Mum. You’ve done nothing but lie to us since the day you came.” Now the tears were coming fast, and Susan didn’t try to hold them back. She turned and bolted for the stairs. She heard Bea calling her, but she didn’t stop.

  Susan didn’t feel like going home, but she didn’t know where else to go. Fourteenth Street was crammed now with shoppers, jostling and bumping and hurrying. Susan’s head was pounding; she wanted time—and space—to think. She decided to head up 12th Avenue along the river. It was a longer walk, but the sidewalk wouldn’t be so congested.

  Once on 12th, Susan tried to gather her thoughts. There was no point to thinking more about Bea. The only thing that mattered was Mum. Susan hated the idea of Mum spending even one day in a stinking, rat-infested cell—much less weeks or even months. She had to think of a way to get Mum out of jail.

  Susan knew she couldn’t trust Bea to help her. Who else could she turn to? Aunt Blanche? The Cochrans? Mrs. Flynn? What could any of them do?

  Across the street, Susan could see a band of river between two warehouses. A tugboat was butting through the water, leaving shimmery green ripples in its wake. On the other side of the river, she spied a patch of trees—the wooded hilltops of New Jersey. She had hazy memories of a long-ago ferry ride and a picnic there on the Jersey slopes. That was before Lucy was born, before Dad died, before Mum disappeared. Such happy memories seemed so distant it was as if they had happened to another person.