Murder between the Lines

by Radha Vatsal

  She came out to the hall, leaving the door slightly ajar so she could mind her students, and spoke in a low voice. “How can I help you, Miss Weeks?”

  “I’m here about Elspeth Bright.”

  Mrs. Swartz’s face fell, and her eyes filled with tears. “It’s a tragedy. A real tragedy. Such a magnificent student. So much talent… And now it’s all gone.”

  “Did you know that she sleepwalked, Mrs. Swartz?”

  “She told me that she used to as a child.”

  “And did she still?”

  Mrs. Swartz tried to recollect. “She never said anything about that,” she said finally.

  “Do you know what she was working on?” Kitty asked.

  The teacher looked over her shoulder and called into the classroom. “No giggling, Belinda.” She turned back to Kitty. “We’re studying the male and female parts of a flower. You must remember, the androecium and gynoecium.”

  “Yes,” Kitty said. The stigma, style, ovary, and ovules. She’d learned about all of them, as well as plant and animal classification.

  “It makes the girls go silly,” Mrs. Swartz said.

  Kitty didn’t want to be distracted from her question. “Could you tell me what Miss Bright was working on?”

  A bell rang, and the girls closed their books.

  “That will be all. We’ll continue tomorrow,” Mrs. Swartz told her pupils.

  The Westfield Hall girls glanced at Kitty as they left the science room. One had a question for her teacher. “Let’s talk later,” Mrs. Swartz said, her voice sharp.

  She and Kitty returned to the classroom once the students had vacated it.

  “Elspeth didn’t discuss her work with me, Miss Weeks. She kept it all under wraps.”

  “And is that behavior typical of your students, Mrs. Swartz?”

  “No, it isn’t. But Elspeth was never typical. And to be completely frank, her knowledge of chemistry far exceeded mine. She had all kinds of books in her house, and she heard about the latest developments through her father.”

  “I know he’s a scientist. What exactly does he do?”

  “I’m not sure where he worked before, but currently, he serves on the Naval Consulting Board. It’s an organization of professional men. I’m not really too familiar with their activities. The only reason I’ve heard of it is because Elspeth happened to mention it once or twice.”

  “Was Miss Bright working on something connected with batteries?” Kitty said.

  “She may have been, but we’ll never know now. Her parents had men come by this past weekend, and they boxed up all of Elspeth’s possessions. Her papers, notebooks, and everything. Miss Howe-Jones felt that it would be best for the other girls that way. We’re having a special service for her, but other than that, all traces of her presence will be erased.” The teacher blinked away a tear.

  “I see,” Kitty said, but she didn’t see anything. It all seemed innocent enough, but if one attributed a sinister motive to the Brights’ and Miss Howe-Jones’s actions, then the whole business could seem like a clever effort to cover up…what?

  “Well, thank you, Mrs. Swartz. By the way, do you know where I can find Georgina Howell?”

  Mrs. Swartz picked up the duster and began to clean the blackboard. “She should be in class. You will have to ask for the principal’s permission to remove her.”

  A man came into the room as Kitty left. He began to converse in German with Mrs. Swartz. “Who was that, Hilde?”

  “A girl from the newspapers. She had questions about Elspeth.”

  Kitty wondered how to proceed. Mrs. Bright had wanted her to speak to Georgina Howell, but she suspected that Miss Howe-Jones wouldn’t appreciate her quizzing her students. She walked over to the main building and asked the receptionist whether the principal was available.

  “It’s good to see you again, Miss Weeks.” Miss Howe-Jones’s plaid dress reminded Kitty of a picnic napkin. “The teachers and I enjoyed your story. We especially enjoyed the way you compared Westfield to other girls’ schools, each run by their own very singular headmistress. I take it as a compliment that you chose to highlight my methods.”

  “Thank you, madam.” Kitty acknowledged the praise with a slight bow of her head. “But I’m here on a different matter, I’m afraid. I wonder if I might ask Miss Howell a few questions?”

  “About what, Miss Weeks?”

  “The evening of Miss Bright’s death.” Although she felt sure she would be rebuffed, Kitty spoke matter-of-factly.

  The principal of Westfield Hall stiffened. “Really, Miss Weeks. I can’t see what business that is of yours. And Miss Bright’s death—may she rest in peace—has affected all of us.”

  “All I want to know,” Kitty pushed further, “is whether anything was troubling Miss Bright the night she died. I believe Miss Howell was there. Perhaps she could shed some light on my friend’s mental state?”

  Miss Howe-Jones drew herself up straight. “You must understand one thing, Miss Weeks. In times such as these, my first thought must be for my students. Miss Howell has no family. She is a scholarship girl, and she has no one except me to protect her. I’m afraid I cannot allow you to speak to her—or to any of my other charges, for that matter.”

  “Wasn’t Elspeth Bright also one of your students?” Kitty countered.

  The principal’s smile was strained. “I’m sorry you have wasted your time, Miss Weeks. But my decision is final. As a boarding school girl yourself, I’m sure you will understand.”

  Dismissed, Kitty left the office. A glass-fronted case in the hallway displayed essays and artwork, some marked with first- and second-place ribbons. Famous Women I Admire. Helping the Poor. My Home, My School, My Days. There was no way to meet Georgina if Miss Howe-Jones refused to budge. As she walked past the classrooms, Kitty could see that all the girls were busy at their lessons, all except for one—the young girl, Virginia, who Kitty had seen being reprimanded. Virginia came around the corner hefting a canvas sack and disappeared into a room off the main corridor. Kitty waited for a moment, then quietly followed her and peeked inside. Virginia was working in the school’s mail room, checking letters one by one and feeding them into small, locked mailboxes.

  Chapter Twelve

  Helena Busby’s spartan alcove spoke volumes about her priorities. While Kitty might have displayed a painting of some natural scene and rolled a colorful carpet on the floor to soften the room’s monastic air, Miss Busby contented herself with a giveaway calendar hung from a nail. Last year, the calendar advertised Ace hair oil; this year, the honor went to Mayhew’s biscuits (“shortbread to please the most discerning palates”). President Wilson’s portrait usually provided the only other relief from the vista of dull, beige paint, but it had been removed, and today, a single hothouse bloom peeked out from a vase.

  Kitty sensed the question coming from Miss Busby, so she answered it. “We have the Belmont interview.”

  “We do?” Helena Busby’s expression hovered somewhere between a smile and a frown.

  “Cheer up, Miss Busby. It will be wonderful. None of our readers will object.” Kitty had telephoned Mrs. Bright the day before, after returning from Westfield, and Elspeth’s mother had given her the good news. “And now I feel I ought to prepare. I know nothing about the Congressional Union or Mrs. Belmont’s past.”

  “Of course. You should go to the morgue.”

  Where else? Kitty thought as she made her way downstairs.

  Mr. Musser’s eyes twinkled when she posed her question. “First somnambulism, then batteries, and now the Naval Consulting Board? What is on your mind, fräulein?”

  “You must know about them, Mr. Musser,” Kitty said.

  “I believe they evaluate proposals from the public.”

  “What kind of proposals?”

  “Inventions that might be useful to the navy. Do yo
u need the files?”

  “No thanks. At least, not yet. I told Miss Busby that I would be educating myself about the Women’s Congressional Union and Alva Belmont.”

  “So, you will be interviewing her?”

  “How did you know that I might be interviewing her?”

  The archivist’s face went blank. Then he said, “I guessed. That’s what you do, don’t you? Interview famous women? Why else would you want to know about Mrs. Belmont?”

  Kitty stared at him. Could he and Miss Busby suddenly have started chatting? But that was impossible. Miss Busby never left her alcove, and except for lunch at the cafeteria, Mr. Musser never came upstairs.

  She put aside the thought and spent the rest of the morning sifting through articles and familiarizing herself with suffrage acronyms in preparation for the interview—she needed to be familiar with the world in which Mrs. Belmont wielded so much influence.

  NAWSA referred to the National American Woman Suffrage Union; CU—the group to which Mrs. Belmont and Mrs. Bright belonged—was the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage; and WPU was the Women’s Political Union. At any rate, the main arc of the suffrage movement that Kitty pieced together was that the NAWSA came into being in 1890, first headed by the seventy-five-year-old suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

  In 1912, two younger suffragists, Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, took charge of NAWSA’s congressional committee and decided to shift from winning voting rights for women at the state and local levels to forcing an amendment to the U.S. Constitution so that women everywhere would enjoy the right to vote. They formed the CU in 1913 and then, the following year, parted ways with NAWSA, which disagreed with their objectives and their tactics, fearing that their aggressive approach would antagonize Congress and male voters.

  The state-by-state approach had gone slowly. The first state in the Union to grant women the right to vote was Wyoming, followed by Colorado, Utah, and Idaho in the 1890s, then nothing until Washington gave its women the right to vote in 1910. Then came California, Oregon, and Arizona. New York’s women still didn’t have the right to vote, and the CU urged their supporters in full-suffrage states to force out lawmakers who didn’t support a federal amendment.

  This was the movement that Mrs. Belmont funded. No wonder people were intimidated by her, Kitty thought. Such fierce political goals combined with her legendary temper made her a force to be reckoned with, and Kitty would soon have the honor of speaking to her in person. She finished her notes, returned the articles to Mr. Musser, and asked Rao to drive her to the Brights’ as soon as the day was done.

  The butler showed Kitty into a study on the second floor rather than the parlor, which was at ground level. Like the do-gooder Mrs. Jellyby of Bleak House, Ephigenia Bright sat at a desk covered with books, papers, pamphlets, and stationery. Her reading glasses slid low on her nose, and her fingers were stained with ink.

  “Come in, my dear, and sit down.” Mrs. Bright took off her glasses. “As you can see, I’m back at work. I’m not accomplishing much though. More distracting myself.”

  Kitty had only spoken briefly to Mrs. Bright yesterday, right after she returned from Westfield Hall. Now, she told Elspeth’s mother what she had learned—that according to Prudence Marquand, Elspeth had been studying batteries, and, Kitty added, she hadn’t been able to speak to Miss Howell, but she had written her a letter asking whether they might meet sometime in private.

  “My girl was studying batteries?” Mrs. Bright rubbed her temples. “How odd.”

  Kitty eyed the papers on the desk. “Perhaps you could look through her schoolbooks.”

  “Dr. Bright has put all Elspeth’s school things into storage at our place in the country.” Mrs. Bright sighed. “He doesn’t want me upsetting myself any further. He says we will go through them together when we’re up there next in the spring.”

  That was a long time away. “Well,” Kitty said, “if I speak to Miss Howell, I will let you know what she tells me. In the meantime, I can’t thank you enough for arranging the meeting with Mrs. Belmont.”

  “Are you ready for it?”

  “I’ve been doing my homework. But there’s still more to learn,” Kitty said.

  “The operetta is her pet project, so I’m sure she will be forthcoming on that score. Are you interested in suffrage yourself, Miss Weeks? I hope you’re not a secret member of an antisuffrage league.”

  “Do such organizations still exist?”

  “I’ve just been reviewing the Massachusetts Anti-Suffrage Committee’s The Case Against Woman Suffrage.” Mrs. Bright fished about among the papers on her desk. “They claim that votes for women will lead to pretty girls buttonholing strange men on the streets on Election Day, listening to shocking testimony in jury trials, running for office—which is sure to encourage girls to remain single and thus take away man’s incentive to chivalry—which in turn, will wreak havoc on society.” She put away the sheet. “What do you think? Is it convincing or rubbish?”

  Before Kitty could reply, a door slammed, and hoots and cries sounded up the stairwell.

  “My boys,” Mrs. Bright said. “Out to play in any weather…”

  A heavy, steady footfall thudded up the steps, the floorboards outside the study creaked, and Mrs. Bright’s homely face turned anxious. A man with muttonchop whiskers and a rigid bearing stood in the doorway.

  “You have a visitor, Ephigenia?” He glanced at Kitty, and then his eyes returned to the mistress of the house.

  “Miss Weeks, please allow me to introduce my husband, Dr. Edgar Bright.”

  Kitty gave a quick bow of her head. “I am very sorry for your loss, sir.”

  “You knew Elspeth.” It was more a statement than a question.

  “Can you believe it, my dear?” Mrs. Bright interjected. “Miss Weeks is a reporter, and she met Elspeth while she was writing that story on Westfield Hall. I asked Miss Weeks to talk to Elspeth’s friends as a favor to me, to find out what might have been on her mind that night.”

  “You did what?” The deliberate restraint in his tone spoke louder than a shriek.

  “And she says,” Mrs. Bright continued, “that before she died, Elspeth might have been working on something to do with batteries.”

  Dr. Bright’s grip on his briefcase tightened. “You shouldn’t have involved a stranger. What Elspeth may or may not have been working on is no one’s business but hers and ours.”

  “I’m sorry, my dear. Miss Weeks is doing me a favor. She won’t print her findings in the papers.”

  “I should be on my way.” Kitty looked back and forth between husband and wife. It had been odd of Mrs. Bright to involve her in Elspeth’s affairs in the first place, and now it was clear that Dr. Bright didn’t approve of her choice.

  “Perhaps that’s for the best.” Elspeth’s mother held out her inky hand. “Good luck with the Belmont interview, Miss Weeks. Please let me know if you need any further assistance.”

  Kitty felt Elspeth’s parents’ eyes on her as she left.

  • • •

  “President awaits Persia details,” a newsboy shouted on the morning of January 5 in the distinctive singsong cadence that he and the thousand other newsboys on every corner of the city seemed to share. “Germans send U-boat to Near East waters.” The modern-day town crier held up a copy of the Sentinel.

  “No, thanks,” Kitty said. Kitty pushed through the revolving doors, checked in with Miss Busby, who seemed to be in an ebullient mood, and raced downstairs to the morgue.

  “I have news for you.” A grin lurked behind Mr. Musser’s walrus mustache. “Of course, I forgot to mention the most obvious fact when we spoke last. It is Mr. Edison who runs the Naval Consulting Board. But you were aware of that, correct?”

  “Excuse me?” Kitty put down her pen and pad.

  “The board was set up this past July by Secretary of the Navy Daniels
to evaluate civilian inventions and proposals that might be of use during wartime. Mr. Thomas Edison chairs it, and it is composed of civilian members—scientists and so on.”

  Kitty’s thoughts spun so fast they almost made her ill. Could Elspeth have submitted a proposal to the board that Mr. Edison chaired and her father served on? One for her own battery? Could that be why she and Dr. Bright fought?

  “But that’s not why you’re here, I presume?”

  “No, no.” Kitty needed to focus. “Mr. Musser, can you give me whatever you have on Mrs. Belmont?”

  Once again, Kitty spent the morning piecing together a story, but this time, it had to do with the society matron, and when she was finished, Kitty realized that she might be in over her head. Alva Erskine Smith was born in Mobile, Alabama, in 1853, the seventh of nine children. By her own reckoning, she was a tempestuous child. Her brother, Murray Forbes Smith Jr., died when she was four, and when visitors said that her father would never recover from the blow and that no other child would take his place, little Alva became furious at the thought that a living daughter couldn’t substitute for a dead son. When she no longer wanted to sleep in the nursery and her mother wouldn’t allow her to move to a different room, she smashed the china figurines on the shelves and attacked a picture hanging on the wall. She was whipped—but allowed to move into her own room, as she had planned.

  Miss Smith met new-money William K. Vanderbilt at a popular vacation spot, and they married in a grand wedding in 1875. Their daughter, Consuelo, was born a few years later. When William K.’s grandfather, “Commodore” Vanderbilt, founder of the New York Central Railroad, died, he left a fortune of one hundred million dollars, of which three million dollars went to his grandson, Alva’s husband. Alva built herself a home, Idle Hour, on Long Island and invited reporters to write about it. When William K.’s father died in 1885, he left Alva’s husband the mind-boggling sum of sixty-five million dollars. She began work on her home in Newport, inspired by the Parthenon and the Petit Trianon in Versailles.