by Radha Vatsal
A second article confirmed that the E-2’s commander had indeed informed the navy in writing about the need for hydrogen detectors on board the submarine. The detectors had not been provided, because the navy had been unable to find any such instrument that would be reliable. Instead, at some earlier date, they had sent an air expert who asserted that the amount of hydrogen developed while the battery was being discharged was only infinitesimal.
Despite her lingering doubts about Mr. Emerson, Kitty had to agree with the paper’s conclusion that the catastrophe on the E-2 had most likely been caused by a combination of the navy’s lack of suitable instrumentation and the Edison company’s overconfidence in its own product.
She finished her scrambled eggs and toast, brought the cutlery together, and untucked her napkin. There was nothing she could have done to prevent the deaths at the navy yard, but she would do everything in her power to find Georgina. She would begin her search of boardinghouses today. The Westfield Hall student couldn’t have vanished into thin air.
“Are you feeling better, Capability?” Mr. Weeks called as Kitty passed by the dining room.
“Somewhat, thanks.”
“I’m worried about you.” They hadn’t spoken much since their last altercation.
“I’m just a bit tired, but I feel revived now.”
Kitty hurried from the apartment before she burst into tears or said something she would regret. He was right; she should grow up. His romantic life was none of her concern. She had more pressing matters—matters in which she could actually make a difference—clamoring for her attention.
Kitty found Miss Busby in a should-I-should-I-not mood. She was tempted to find her boss a dandelion and let her blow until fate and the wind decided whether she should cover Mrs. Belmont and the Congressional Union’s meeting with the president.
While the Ladies’ Page editor dithered, Kitty went to speak to Jeannie.
“Would you help me make a list of boardinghouses in the city, preferably ones that are cheap and would allow a girl to stay on a short-term basis?”
Jeannie looked concerned. “Are things so bad for you, Miss Weeks?”
“Oh no, not for me,” Kitty clarified. Although, she thought, never say never—she might have to consider the possibility. “I’m searching for a friend.”
“That’s good to hear, because you won’t like those places. Roaches, bedbugs, unwashed sheets.” Jeannie shivered. “They make mine look like the Ritz.”
“So can you help me?”
“I have to finish proofreading for Miss B. If you can start putting a list together from the directory, I’ll look through it and tell you which ones are cheaper.”
Kitty went to the morgue, found a copy of Trow’s General Directory of the Boroughs of Manhattan and Bronx, and began leafing through it page by page, jotting down the names and addresses of boardinghouses for women.
“Working hard, fräulein?” Mr. Musser called from behind his counter.
“A girl has to earn her living,” Kitty said.
She was on her twenty-second entry when one of the mail boys came looking for her. “There’s someone waiting to see you by the clock, miss.”
“Who is it?” Kitty asked.
“She didn’t give a name.”
Kitty wondered whether her luck had finally turned.
“Don’t forget to put away the book before you leave,” Musser said.
She hurriedly replaced the volume, stuffed her papers into her pocket, and ran upstairs. There, amid the mail boys, the reporters, and the advertising men rushing in and out, stood a solitary figure in a dark cloak. Kitty took a step nearer. It was Georgina Howell.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Miss Howell.” Kitty reached for her hand. “Are you all right? You’ve had us all worried sick.”
“All?” The Westfield Hall student moved toward the exit.
“I spoke to Miss Howe-Jones. She was very concerned about you.”
“I don’t want to go back.” She may have been just a schoolgirl, but Georgina sounded sure of herself.
“Where have you been sleeping these past few nights? Would you like to come upstairs and have something to eat?”
She nodded, and Kitty brought her up to the cafeteria, where they ordered tea and, since it was between breakfast and lunch, made do with boiled eggs, cheese, and crackers.
“I’ve been staying at a boardinghouse.” Miss Howell devoured the food. “But I don’t have much money, so this is much appreciated.”
“Which boardinghouse?” Kitty felt pleased she had been on the right track and glad she had been spared the trouble of knocking on doors.
Georgina Howell sprinkled a peeled egg with salt. “For the moment, I’ll keep that to myself.”
“Fair enough. What brings you to Manhattan? And why didn’t you come see me earlier?”
“I needed a few days to be by myself and think about my future. I would have sent word, but I didn’t want anyone looking for me. If you’re not too upset, I hope you will help me, Miss Weeks. I’d like to become a reporter, just like you are.”
“You must finish school first.”
“Did you finish school?”
“I did, and I think it’s stood me in good stead.”
“The trouble for me is that if I stay on, Miss Howe-Jones will trap me in her web. She holds me too close,” Georgina cried. “I must escape while I can. I have no desire to become a charity case at Bryn Mawr.”
“The two of you aren’t related, by any chance?”
“Who? Miss Howe-Jones and I? No. What makes you ask that?”
“I was just wondering. Your names sound so similar.”
Georgina shook her head. “She’s my guardian, that’s all.” Georgina Howell pointed to her cloak and smart dress. “Look at my clothes, Miss Weeks. These are all hand-me-downs from former students. I want to earn my own way. I don’t need any benefactors or fancy scholarships.”
Kitty understood how she felt. Not about the benefactors, but about needing to be free.
“Did you go to college, Miss Weeks?”
“I considered applying to Columbia University’s School of Journalism. But it’s a four-year course, and to be honest, I didn’t think I would get in. Besides, I wanted to start working right away.”
“So do I. Is that so wrong?”
“Well, you know I can’t tell you that it is.” Kitty leaned across the table. “But I had to convince my father, and you will need to convince your headmistress.”
“She will never be convinced.” Georgina sounded frustrated. “Miss Howe-Jones thinks she knows what’s best for everyone. Can you imagine what that’s like, Miss Weeks, having your life mapped out for you in advance? She would have me wind up a spinster, teaching English literature at some New England girls’ college, then return to take her place at Westfield. I’ve told her several times that I want to live in New York, but she won’t hear of it. You must know how desperate I feel.”
Kitty shared Georgina’s sense of urgency. Yet she could barely take care of herself, so how could she help another young woman?
“Miss Howell—” Kitty touched her cheek.
“Were you hurt?” Georgina noticed the redness.
“I was in a car accident. And that’s another reason—if something happens to you, who will look after you? Who will pay your bills? I have my father. You need your guardian.”
Georgina remained silent. “Was it painful?” she asked after a while.
“The accident?” What a strange question. “Not at the moment it occurred, no. I was knocked unconscious, but afterward, it hurt like mad… Miss Howell, I must ask you something.” Kitty changed the subject. “This has to do with the night Elspeth Bright died. Were you aware that she fought with her father?”
The young woman’s eyes narrowed, and Kitty sensed her disappointment but di
dn’t know what Georgina expected of her. She was sure of one thing though: a young, decent girl couldn’t survive in New York alone. Even Jeannie and the other typists had families, no matter how far away, that they could rely on.
“Miss Howell,” Kitty prompted. “Elspeth and Dr. Bright—did they have an altercation?”
“Yes they did, and Elspeth told me about it,” Georgina said finally. “She had discovered something about some new Edison batteries not working and informed Dr. Bright, but he wouldn’t believe her. He insisted her findings must be in error.”
With a sharp intake of breath, Kitty realized that her imaginings had been misguided. Elspeth hadn’t invented her own storage battery—at least not that anyone knew of—but she had figured out that the Edison ones were defective.
“She felt sure she was right,” Georgina continued, gathering steam, “and she told Dr. Bright that if he chose not to, she would notify the Naval Consulting Board herself.”
“And did she—did she send a letter or message?”
“Where was the time? Mrs. Bright called her to help, then the guests arrived, and not more than a few hours later…” Georgina shivered.
Weighed down by what she had learned, Kitty finished the sentence for her. “Yes. Not more than a few hours later, Elspeth was dead.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Georgina left, telling Kitty she was determined to make a clean break with Miss Howe-Jones, even though Kitty begged her not to rush into something she might regret. Afterward, she couldn’t concentrate on her work. All she could think about were Dr. Bright and his daughter. Elspeth had known that the batteries were imperfect. Like that personable captain of the E-2 who testified in front of the Board of Inquiry, she may have suspected that the batteries were dangerous despite the navy and Mr. Edison’s experts’ insistence that they weren’t. She had told her father she would go to the Naval Consulting Board herself if he didn’t.
“Leaving early, Miss Weeks?” Jeannie asked as Kitty collected her things.
“Yes, have a good weekend.” Kitty had become fed up with pushing papers around.
“Thanks. You too. Do you still need my help with the boardinghouse?”
“That matter seems to be resolved for the moment. Thanks, Jeannie.” She had to face the suspicion that had troubled her intermittently since the day of her own accident. Could Dr. Bright have engineered Elspeth’s death? Could a father turn on his own daughter in such a vicious manner?
“No!” She stepped into the elevator.
“I beg your pardon?” The operator turned to Kitty.
“Sorry. I’m just talking to myself.”
Dr. Bright couldn’t have been threatened by his daughter. He had been certain of the batteries’ safety. He wouldn’t have brought Kitty, a reporter, to the naval yard if he suspected that she might witness a disaster. It would have been an embarrassment to him if Elspeth went over his head and contacted his colleagues at the board, but that would have been all. Not reason enough—if there ever could be enough reason—to wish for the death of his own child.
He must have wanted to speak to Kitty to make sure that Elspeth hadn’t told anyone else about her suspicions. It wouldn’t look good for the navy, the board, and the Edison company if the news came out that a board member’s daughter doubted its chairman’s prized invention.
Elspeth had died after a heated argument. That might seem suspicious, but it could also be a perfectly reasonable explanation for what triggered her final, fatal instance of somnambulism.
Shaken, Kitty telephoned Miss Howe-Jones from the apartment. The headmistress deserved to know that her pupil was alive and well even though Georgina wanted to keep her address secret.
“Miss Weeks.” Miss Howe-Jones picked up the line.
“Good afternoon, Miss Howe-Jones. I wanted to let you know Miss Howell came to see me today.”
“Where is she?” The headmistress sounded frantic. “Is she with you? Keep her there. I will send a car.”
“As far as I can tell, she doesn’t want to return to Westfield.”
“Impossible. Where is she staying?”
“She didn’t say, Miss Howe-Jones.”
“You just let her go? You didn’t ask?”
“I couldn’t prevent her.”
“I didn’t expect you to be so callous, Miss Weeks. Miss Howell is all alone. She has no one else in the world.”
“I couldn’t detain her by force, madam,” Kitty said. “Besides, she seemed to want to take care of herself. In fact, she seemed eager to take care of herself.”
“That is not for you to judge.” The headmistress slammed down the receiver.
Kitty slowly hung up her end of the line. Later that evening, Julian Weeks invited Kitty to the Lanes’ for dinner, but she declined, blaming a headache.
“You are going to have to give in at some point, you know,” he said as he left. “You can’t have a headache forever.”
• • •
Kitty’s Melinda and Her Sisters story appeared on Saturday below an attractive photograph of Miss Maxwell directing Miss Dressler, Miss Doro, and the debutantes. The news section of the paper reported that the author Henry James was very ill in England and that in the article AWAKE AND PREPARE, printed in the Metropolitan Magazine, former President Theodore Roosevelt had called for a navy that would be second in size and efficiency only to that of Great Britain.
“We do not need to make it the first,” Mr. Roosevelt wrote, “because Great Britain is not a military power, and our relations with Canada are on a basis of such permanent friendliness that hostile relations need not be considered.” He also proposed that the regular army should be increased to a quarter of a million men and wrote that “Neither of these needs is in any way met by the administration’s proposals… During the last three years, our navy has fallen off appallingly in relative position among the nations.”
Kitty kept reading in her rooms, since Grace told her that her father had already eaten breakfast. “Our government should make provision this year which will insure the regaining of our naval place at the earliest possible moment.” All the more reason for Edison’s batteries to work. “On paper, our present strength is 100,000 men,” President Roosevelt went on, “and we have in the United States a mobile army of 20,000 men… We should have a mobile army of 150,000 men to guarantee us against having New York or San Francisco at once seized by any big military nation which went to war with us.”
Kitty couldn’t think who might want to attack the United States. Mr. Roosevelt had already eliminated Canada as a possibility. Perhaps Mexico then?
At any rate, it was clear that war clouds had gathered. President Wilson’s preparedness tour was just the next step.
She folded the paper, brushed her teeth, and dressed. It was odd that life-and-death matters on an international scale were so often decided by families. Not just the obvious ones: Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany was first cousin to King George of England, who was the cousin of Tsar Nicholas of Russia. But here in America as well: Treasury Secretary McAdoo was President Wilson’s son-in-law, and Theodore Roosevelt’s distant cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was Naval Secretary Daniels’s second-in-command.
And women were supposed to be gossips who made everything personal. How would things be impersonal between these men? Did wearing trousers give them some special abilities that those who wore skirts didn’t possess? As far as Kitty could tell, men were just as petty as women, but when they didn’t get their way, they didn’t resort to intrigues—they started wars. Everyone said that the kaiser had demanded that Germany’s navy be strengthened, in part because his uncle Edward, the previous king of England, had snubbed him at the royal family’s annual regattas.
Julian Weeks knocked at Kitty’s door. “What are your plans for today?”
“I thought I’d take a walk.”
“May I join you?�
�� He was trying to make amends.
“Of course.”
They dressed warmly and walked up Riverside Drive in silence. The crisp breeze from the water chilled Kitty’s cheeks, but it was nothing compared to the icy wind during her drive to Georgina’s boarding school.
“Aside from your feelings about Miss Lane,” Julian Weeks said presently, “you don’t seem to be yourself. Is something else troubling you?”
Kitty sighed, wondering whether to tell him. Not everything perhaps, but some part of what had been gnawing at her. “A girl from Westfield Hall ran away from school. She wants to become a reporter and came to find me at work, asking for my help.”
He blinked. “And what did you say?”
“The headmistress is her guardian. She has no family, no friends, no money. I told her not to act too fast.”
“Where are her parents?”
“I believe they died in an automobile accident.”
“Where is she staying?” Mr. Weeks slowed his usual brisk pace.
“She didn’t tell me.”
“Does she seem like a sensible girl?”
“Oh yes. She’s sensible and intelligent. She’s the school’s head girl.”
“We should help her then.”
Kitty turn to face him. “We should help?”
“You forget that I’m an orphan myself.” Julian Weeks had been raised by nuns and had escaped as a boy, eventually making his fortune abroad. “If she wants her freedom, she should have it.”
“I don’t believe this,” Kitty retorted angrily. “You support Miss Howell but leave me in the lurch.”
“What haven’t I allowed you to do, Capability?” Mr. Weeks turned on her. “You’re one of the fortunate ones. You have money and independence and a parent who dotes on you. This poor young woman has nothing. If she makes contact again, I’d like to speak to her.”
Kitty shook her head. “She wants to work. She doesn’t want to continue receiving handouts.”
“I understand that too. That’s exactly how I felt.”
Kitty gritted her teeth. By virtue of being parentless, it seemed that Georgina Howell was more deserving of his sympathy than his own daughter. She didn’t hear him standing up for her rights very often. She couldn’t deny it. She was jealous.