by Rhys Bowen
“I’ll be going then,” I called out loudly and closed the front door behind me. Then I went as far as the street corner, stood out of sight, and waited. And waited. After a while nobody had appeared. I was tempted to go back and see if anyone had been through the upstairs rooms, but I was also a little hesitant to do so. Then I saw the mailman, coming up the street from the other direction. So the mail here was delivered later than I had anticipated. There might still be a letter for us today. My desire to see what the mail was bringing overcame my reluctance to go back to the house. I had just plucked up courage to go back inside when I noticed a constable coming toward me from around Tompkins Square. I ran over to him.
“You know Mrs. Goodwin who lives on this street?”
“I should say so. Old Whitey was a good mate of mine.”
“Did you hear she’s in the hospital, run down by a horse and wagon?”
“I heard, at the station this morning. Do you know how she’s doing?”
“Better than we could have hoped. She’s regained consciousness and is alert and talking.”
“Well, that is good news, miss.” He beamed at me, pausing to take out a handkerchief and wipe sweat from his round face before giving every intention of continuing his beat.
I put a hand on his arm to detain him. “Mrs. Goodwin has just sent me to her house to pick up the mail and there are signs that somebody has been in there, poking around in her desk. I didn’t go upstairs, in case somebody was still up there. I don’t think they are, but the police should know.”
“Somebody broke in?”
“No, there was no sign of a break-in, but the front door was open.”
“You don’t say. Don’t you worry, miss. I’ll keep an eye on the place in the future,” he said.
“No, it’s more than that, Constable. Mrs. Goodwin was working on the East Side Ripper case. I think the detectives in charge of that case should know, Officers Quigley and McIver. Do you know them?”
“Quigley and McIver? Stationed at headquarters, no doubt.”
I nodded. The mailman had now reached Mrs. Goodwin’s front door, and I watched him push something through the mail slot.
“I’m going back to that house now to collect the mail that’s just been delivered,” I said. “Could I ask you to take a look and make sure nobody is hiding upstairs?”
“Very good, miss,” he said, but he didn’t look at all happy about it.
“I’m sure there’s nobody there,” I said. “I left the house at least half an hour ago and nobody has come out since; but just in case, I’d rather have a big, strong constable with a club along with me.”
He accompanied me down the street, trying to appear confident and resolute, his hand grasped on his billy club. I opened the front door, picked up the letter that was lying on the mat, and let him into the house. Then I followed him up the stairs.
“There’s no sign anyone’s been up here, miss,” he said, having checked both bedrooms and the large wardrobe. “Maybe you imagined it.”
“Oh no,” I said. “Someone has rifled through her desk, all right. Come and take a look for yourself. The officers in charge should know about it.”
“Very good, miss,” he said. “I’ll pass along the word.”
I let him out again, not entirely convinced he’d take this seriously. I suspected he put it down to female hysteria. I was dying to take a look at that letter. I shot the bolt across the front door, just in case, then carried it through to the kitchen. It was simply addressed to “MG” at her address. The postmark was Queens. I turned it over in my hands a couple of times, knowing full well that it wasn’t addressed to me and I should wait until Mrs. Goodwin herself opened it. Then finally curiosity got the better of me. If it was a letter we were hoping for, then Mrs. Goodwin would want to know about it as soon as possible. If not, then there was no rush to deliver it to her. I ripped it open.
It was written in a rounded, rather childish hand, but neatly, with no blots.
Dear Sir or Madam:
I saw your notice in today’s Herald. My sister, Denise Lindquist (we call her by her nickname, Dilly), has been gone for over a month. Everyone says she ran off with a boy, but I don’t believe it. Dilly’s a good girl and hardworking at the button factory, and she wouldn’t just run off with a boy like that.
But she did tell me a secret before she went and made me promise I wouldn’t tell nobody—she said she got a note from a boy asking her to meet him at Coney Island. She was very excited. I never had a secret tryst with a boy before, she said. Then she never came home. My mother and father are from Sweden. They are real strict with us and don’t let us go with no boys. Now they say she is a no-good girl, and we don’t talk about her no more. I went to the police, but they don’t seem to care.
Yours truly,
Kristina (Krissy) Lindquist
I stared at it with growing excitement. She had gone to meet a boy at Coney Island. It had to be connected with the disappearance of the other girls. I had learned something else important too—she had gone to meet a boy. We were dealing with a young man, attractive enough to make girls want to take risks to meet him.
I wanted to show this to Mrs. Goodwin straightaway, but I knew I had no hope of making it past the platoon of guard nuns once more this evening. I’d just have to be patient and wait until morning. By that time the morning post would have arrived as well, maybe bringing us more letters. I was just putting the letter back into its envelope when I heard a noise at the front door. I stood in the kitchen doorway and saw the door handle start to turn. Of course the bolt held the door firm. The door handle then jiggled, and the door was shoved with considerable strength.
My heart was racing. If he found that he couldn’t get in through the front door, would he just go away or try to break in? I went and looked out of the kitchen window. Breaking in through the rear of the house would be almost impossible. There was a tiny square of yard, fenced off from other yards and with the wall of another house at the rear. So he could hardly climb in that way. I had to make sure I got out safely and went to find that constable again. I decided I’d bluff it out.
“There’s someone at the front door, I think, Bessie,” I called in my best Irish accent. “Would you go and see who it is?”
Then I crept into the front parlor and peered through the lace curtains. There was nobody to be seen. Now the horrible truth dawned on me that he might be crouched down by those potted bay trees, out of my line of vision from this window, waiting for me to come out. I stayed safely out of sight behind the curtains and waited. Then I spied a welcome sight—the constable was making his rounds again, coming along the other side of the street. I unbolted the front door, glanced in both directions, saw nobody, then ran to intercept him.
“He was here again,” I gasped.
“Who was, miss?”
“The man who broke into Mrs. Goodwin’s house. He tried to get in at the front door, but I’d bolted it from the inside.”
“A man, miss? Can you describe him?”
“I didn’t see him,” I said impatiently. “I looked out through the window, but I didn’t see him.”
“I’ve been standing on that corner over there for the past fifteen minutes and haven’t seen any men on the street. Are you sure about this?”
“Yes, I’m very sure. The door handle jiggled,” I said. “Then he shoved the door hard, trying to force it open. He must have escaped while you were making your rounds.”
“Maybe,” he said.
Another idea struck me. “Have there been any vehicles passing on the street?”
He frowned. “Not recently. There was a delivery on the square earlier. And the butcher’s boy came by on his bicycle.”
Bicycle, I thought. Somebody could make a hasty getaway on a bicycle.
“Any other bicycles?”
“Not that I noticed,” he said. “Look, miss, I think you’re getting a bit overexcited about this—possibly because you’re upset about your friend’s accide
nt. Why don’t you go home and have a nice lie down and a cool drink.”
There was nothing more to be done today, so I accepted his suggestion. “You will keep an eye on the place, and you will report it to the right people?”
“I’ve already done so, miss,” he said. “So don’t you worry. Nobody’s going to break into the house again.”
I collected the letter and locked the front door. Of course I couldn’t bolt it from the outside, but it was the best I could do. Besides, he’d already been through Sabella’s papers. I couldn’t think of anything else in the house that might be of interest to him. So why had he come back this afternoon? Had he come back because he knew I was there? This wasn’t likely. How would he know I had any connection with Mrs. Goodwin or that I’d be sent to pick up her mail? Then I took this one stage further: Was the mail the reason he had come? He had seen the advertisement in the newspapers and wanted to make sure the letters that could incriminate him never got to Mrs. Goodwin. Possibly there had been letters in an earlier post that were now in his possession.
I made a resolve to come back early tomorrow morning in time to intercept the first post of the day before I went to see Mrs. Goodwin in the hospital. One thing I was sure of was that we were on the right track. Something we were doing had definitely gotten him rattled.
TWENTY-EIGHT
As I walked home along Seventh Street, I sensed that I was being followed. I turned around, but saw nothing but housewives returning home with their shopping, children playing, fathers coming home from work. But the feeling didn’t go away until I reached the busy area of the university with its noisy throngs of students. I crossed Washington Square and looked back at the entrance to Patchin Place before I walked up to my front door and let myself in.
I had scarcely sat down at my kitchen table when there was a thunderous knock at my front door that set my heart racing again.
“Who is it?” I called.
“Who else would it be?” came Sid’s voice.
I opened the door and saw them both standing there, beaming at me.
“Why the secrecy?” Sid asked.
“Because I thought I was being followed home,” I said. “No matter. My vivid Irish imagination, I expect.”
“Come over to us for dinner,” Gus said. “Then we can keep an eye out for suspicious individuals skulking in the alley. We’re getting really good at it, Molly. We’re turning out to be brilliant detectives.”
“You’ll never guess where we’ve been today,” Sid burst out as she took my hand and led me out of my house. “Go on. Ask us.”
“Where have you been today?” I asked, with sinking heart.
“To Newport, Rhode Island, to track down the mysterious young man who had a pash on Letitia Blackwell.”
“You went all the way to Rhode Island?”
“It wasn’t that far. A couple of hours by train,” Sid said. “And a pleasant journey at that along the ocean.”
“And you managed to locate the young man?”
Sid pushed open their front door and dragged me inside. “Absolutely,” she said. “Gus was amazing. She knows everybody, you know. We only had to stroll along the seafront for five minutes before she had located an old friend from Boston. Five minutes after that we had heard all the gossip about what was going on in each of the cottages.”
“Cottages?” I asked, confused.
Sid laughed. “That’s what they call them—their cottages. The fact that all the houses have at least twenty-five bedrooms doesn’t strike them as absurd. Newport is where the rich and famous spend their summers.”
We went through the kitchen and out to the conservatory at the back. There was a jug of lemonade and glasses waiting on the wicker table. Sid motioned me to sit.
“So what about the boy you were hunting? Don’t tell me he’s among the rich and famous?” I asked, as she handed me a glass of lemonade.
Gus looked pleased with herself. “Not a Vanderbilt, but the house is pretty impressive, wouldn’t you say, Sid?”
“Definitely not a pauper,” Sid agreed. “And his mother actually went to finishing school with Gus’s mother, so of course we were invited in for lunch.”
“And you met him?”
“No, because apparently he’s volunteering at a camp for poor city children out on a lake somewhere. His name is Harold Robertson, by the way. He’s the despair of his industrialist father because he shows no interest in going into the family business and only wants to do good. He’s studying divinity and works among the poor in his spare time. She showed us a picture of him—chubby and adorable, like an overgrown choirboy.”
“Did you find out anything about Letitia?”
Gus nodded. “He had told his mother about this wonderful girl who came to help out at the settlement house, and he said what a pity it was that she was engaged to someone else because she’d be the sort of wife a minister should have.”
“But the mother had never met her,” Sid added. “She said he arrived home quite disgruntled on the day when Letitia must have gone missing. He said they were supposed to go out to Coney Island together to plan the children’s outing for the next day, but Letitia never showed up.”
“And he’s now at a camp by a lake for the summer?” I asked.
“So we gather,” Sid said.
“Far from New York?”
“In the wilds, I believe,” Gus said. “Harold’s mother said it was horribly primitive, and she couldn’t understand what made him do it as she’d brought him up to expect the best.”
“Why do you ask, Molly?” Sid asked, with her usual great perception.
“Because Letitia is not the first girl to disappear after a planned trip to Coney Island. I know of another girl who went there to meet a boy and never came back.”
“You don’t think—you can’t possibly think that Harold Robertson…” Gus exclaimed.
“I’ve never met Harold Robertson, so I don’t know what to believe. I’m trying to piece together a jigsaw puzzle, and so far I’ve remarkably few pieces. Now I have a name, a missing girl, and a planned trip to Coney Island. They all fit very nicely.”
“So you think he could have lured Letitia to Coney Island and then what? Killed her? Hid the body?” Sid was looking at me, her expression half horror, half excitement.
“Possibly not hid the body,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that we’ve found out that at least one of those dead prostitutes killed by the East Side Ripper was not a prostitute at all. She was just dressed up to look like one. So maybe the others weren’t either.”
“That is incredible,” Gus said. “But Molly, what are you doing looking into the East Side Ripper murders? Please don’t tell me it is a case you are trying to tackle.”
“It may have some connection to Daniel’s false imprisonment,” I said. “I’m beginning to think it doesn’t, but I’ve been helping a woman police officer who is involved.”
“A woman police officer? Are there such beings?”
“There are and she is wonderful,” I said. “She started off as a matron, but now she is used on undercover assignments.”
Sid thumped Gus on the back. “There you are, Gus. Our next career move.”
“Hold it,” I said, laughing. “She’s very smart, but she’s not having an easy time of it. The male officers resent her and don’t trust her, and right now she’s in the hospital, having been deliberately run down by a horse and carriage.”
“So you are taking over while she’s out of commission?” Sid asked.
“Not really. Just helping out,” I said. “She made me promise that I wouldn’t go alone to the Lower East Side.”
“Thank heavens for that,” Gus said. “So do tell us—do you have any suspects in mind? Do you think it’s a pillar of the community, as Dr. Birnbaum suggested?”
“I think it’s someone who is clever and likes taking risks,” I said.
“Do you really think it’s possible it could be Ha
rold Robertson?” Sid asked. “He’s certainly a pillar.”
“We should find out exactly where that camp is, and then we can determine if he could get to Coney Island and back with ease,” Gus said.
“But why Coney Island?” Sid asked. “If he wants to lure girls to their deaths, why not Central Park? Why not the Palisades on the other side of the Hudson? I should have thought that Coney was the last place where one could get a girl alone and be able to kill her. It’s absolutely seething with humanity at this time of year.”
“He could take her to a hotel room,” Gus suggested. “There are plenty of cheap hotels in the Brighton Beach area.”
“But what respectable girl would go to a cheap hotel room with a strange man?” I asked. “Certainly not Letitia Blackwell.”
“She’s right,” Sid agreed. “This is an enigma.”
“I suggest we eat.” Gus got up and headed for the kitchen. “You’ll join us, of course, Molly.”
Visions of Gus’s latest attempts at vegetarian cooking floated before my eyes, but I couldn’t find a polite way to refuse. “Thank you, I’d love to,” I said.
“We’re having pork chops,” Gus called back from the ice chest.
“Pork chops? I thought you had become Buddhists.”
Sid grinned. “We decided we weren’t the meditating types. After we went out sleuthing for you that day, we agreed that we are women of action, and women of action need good red meat to sustain them.”
“Ryan will be disappointed,” I said, “after he’s invested in those saffron robes.”
TWENTY-NINE
The pork chops must not have agreed with me because I had the dream again, the first time for a couple of weeks. This time it was more nebulous, with the laughter, the water, the blood, all blending together into a deep feeling of dread that had me waking, drenched in sweat. I went downstairs and saw from the clock that it was four-thirty. Hardly worth going back to sleep, even if I could.