by Amy Stewart
But what else could I do?
Mrs. Kayser shook her head slowly and patted my hand. She reminded me, in a way that made me ache a little, of my own late mother: fatigued and resigned, but with her own kind of warmth.
“You know I haven’t any lawyer,” she said, “and who would pay his bills, even if he were to read my letter and take up the matter? He’d run straight to Charlie for his fee, and that would put an end to it.”
“Isn’t there anyone who could help with the fees?” I sounded a little desperate, but what else could I do? “A neighbor or a relation?”
Mrs. Kayser gave me a faint smile. To my astonishment, she reached up and touched my cheek, the way one comforts an anxious child. No inmate of mine had ever tried a thing like that.
“Go on,” she said. “I’ll think on it. If anyone comes to mind, I’ll write that letter before I leave.”
I hated to go home. Surely she needed me beside her until Dr. Ogden came for her. But she must’ve guessed at what I was thinking, because she said, “You aren’t to wait here all day with me. I’m just going to close my eyes for a little while this afternoon.” To prove it, she stretched out on her bunk, leaving me no choice but to get up.
I had the most horrible feeling that if I left, I might never see her again. But what else was I to do?
“Deputy Kopp,” called Sheriff Heath, from the top of the stairs. He was going to evict me if I didn’t leave of my own accord.
10
norma rattled the newspaper as soon as I walked in the door.
“What is this nonsense?” she shouted from the sitting room, before I could shake off my scarf. I peered through the dust into the face of the standing clock in our foyer and saw that the afternoon papers would’ve just arrived.
“‘Girl Sheriff Dives’ was the first headline I saw,” pronounced Norma as I dropped onto the divan, “and you can be sure I didn’t have to wonder which girl sheriff it might’ve been.”
She lowered the paper and peered at me over the top. Her hair was flattened from the wool cap she wore outdoors all day. “Although I’ve never known you to dive. If anyone in this house has ever submerged herself into any body of water larger than a bathtub, I didn’t hear about it. You smell like a swamp, by the way.”
Fleurette came out of her sewing room with a pincushion on her wrist and a pair of thread snips over her thumb. “I used to go in the ocean. We haven’t been in ages. Why don’t we—”
“The last time we went to the seashore, Constance’s gangsters tried to burn down our house.”
Norma had a way of stringing information together that made it seem as if entirely unrelated events had some causal link: trips to the seashore and arson attempts, for instance. She also liked to make it seem as if any sort of criminal mischief that came our way was my doing. The gangsters didn’t belong to me, and it was entirely outside the bounds of ordinary grammar to refer to them in the possessive, but it was useless to explain any of that.
“I wouldn’t mind a trip to the shore,” I said, just to oppose Norma. “If we have another stretch of warm weather, we’ll go.”
Norma grunted at that and shifted around in her tattered leather armchair. “I thought you were to stay out of the papers until after the election.”
“That was the general idea,” I admitted.
“Then why did you have to go and jump into the river after a man? You know they can’t resist a story like that. Look at this headline: ‘Woman Detective Rescues Lunatic.’” She rattled the page at me but wouldn’t actually let me look at it.
“It sounds like a moving picture,” Fleurette said.
“The Hackensack Republican agrees,” Norma said. “I can’t tell if I’m reading a newspaper or Moby-Dick.” She pushed her spectacles up and read it to us.
Sabbath morning dawned dark and gloomy. A northeaster of indeterminate force, varying from breeze to half-gale, carried snowflakes that covered the earth with a pure white mantle save where soggy roads turned the fleecy crystals into drops that were lost in the mud which stretched away through the town and country, monster black serpents, thick with pasty, oily slime. As the day advanced into afternoon and the storm ceased, sputtering like a weary runner, the sun shone forth, and night tossed her dark robe over a world rejoicing in a rosy sunset. The moon, passing into its first quarter and attended by a tiny star, rode in brilliant glory, while the constellations and the Milky Way honored the Queen of Night. Quote we now from the Newark News . . .
“‘The Queen of Night’?” I put in. “They’re embarrassing themselves.”
“They’re trying to embarrass you. I’ll spare you the account of the rescue itself, on the grounds that you’re already acquainted with the facts, and go right on to the quotes they’ve invented for you, presented, they explained, to illustrate the fact that the ‘deputy sheriffess is susceptible to the weaknesses of ordinary women.’”
“Please don’t,” I said, but she did.
We quote the Tribune, to the end that no element of this serio-farcical romantic comedietta may perish from the earth.
“I will never forgive myself,” she said, after a night’s rest under the care of a trained nurse. “I really wasn’t scared though. I was just awfully tired when I got my man ashore.”
“It was wonderful, Miss Kopp,” beamed Sheriff Heath, who stood by.
“Not so wonderful,” protested his deputy. “He was my prisoner and I was responsible for him.”
“That’s all right,” insisted the sheriff, “but I consider you one of the most efficient county officials that we have.”
“Thanks awfully, Sheriff. Everything is all right now except,” and Miss Kopp hesitated, “except my suit.”
“We’ll go to New York and get a new one. The county owes you that.”
“You have not been to New York to look at dresses without me!” Fleurette cried. She’d taken to wearing a string of wax-filled glass beads meant to resemble pearls. They had not yet made their New York debut.
Norma knew her business and liked to work Fleurette into a state. “That’s what it says. Apparently Mrs. Heath took her.”
“Mrs. Heath!”
“Of course she didn’t,” I assured Fleurette. “Do I look like I’ve been to New York to shop for dresses? They stole most of that from the Tribune, and invented the rest.”
“Then how did the Tribune find out? I hope it was a man under a lamp-post with a notebook and an evil glint in his eye,” Fleurette said.
“That’s how they do it in the pictures, but in this case, Sheriff Heath had to go over to the courthouse and explain why the inmates hadn’t yet been sent away. The reporters heard just enough to get going on it.”
“Or maybe one of the guards is being paid to slip scandalous news to the papers,” Fleurette suggested, ever hopeful for more drama and intrigue.
“Our guards wouldn’t do that to Sheriff Heath,” I said. “Besides, there’s nothing scandalous about it. Inmates do try to escape. It’s our job to put a stop to it. That’s all I did.”
“The real scandal is that you stayed at work all day after you went for a swim in the Hackensack River,” said Norma. “I don’t believe that particular odor has ever been introduced to our parlor before, and we do live on a farm.”
I was a mess. It was no wonder I’d been so ill-treated by Dr. Lipsky and Dr. Ogden. “I’ve come home for a bath and a fresh suit. I intend to use every one of Fleurette’s soaps and potions.”
“Not all of them!” Fleurette shrieked, and ran upstairs to put away her lavender talc and savon violette.
I was starting to stiffen on the divan, so I groaned and forced myself up. “I’ll tell you the scandal that ought to be in the papers,” I said to Norma. “The woman I was to have taken to Morris Plains has been committed by her husband for no reason that I can see. Her doctor insists that it’s nervous hysteria, but even he admits that he hasn’t so much as spoken to her.”
Norma didn’t bother to look up from her paper. “If she
’s been committed, there must be something the matter with her. She managed to hide it from you, but some of them are clever that way.”
“What do you know about it?”
“I know there’s nothing you can do if the judge has ruled. You oughtn’t to try to save every errant girl who comes your way.”
“She’s hardly a girl. She’s well over fifty, and do you know that this is the fourth time her husband has had her committed? I had to do something.”
Norma looked up at me, suspicious. “What did you do?”
“I just told you. I went to speak to her doctor, but he had nothing more to say on the matter. It seems to me that she should have another physician examine her, but how is she to arrange any of that?”
“Don’t they have doctors at Morris Plains?”
“Of course, but have you ever heard of an asylum doctor turning a patient away because she seemed too sane for commitment?”
“No,” Norma admitted. “I suppose what she needs is a lawyer, not a doctor. Does she happen to have one of those in her pocket?”
“She does not.”
I was already on my way upstairs. I paused on the third step and turned around. “But . . . there’s no reason I shouldn’t speak to a lawyer.”
“I can think of all sorts of reasons,” Norma muttered, but it was spoken entirely out of habit. She’d already turned back to her papers and the words came out reflexively.
I thought it over as I soaked in the bath Fleurette had drawn for me, which was laced with the only toiletries she would permit me to use: a bath salt scented of cheap lilac, and a bar of soap meant to smell like cashmere, although even Fleurette couldn’t explain what odor cashmere possessed.
It didn’t matter. Even her least favorite toiletries brought about a tremendous improvement in my spirits and banished the miasma of New Jersey waterways from my person.
Sheriff Heath had made it plain that his office had no jurisdiction over Anna Kayser’s commitment. But what was to stop me, in the privacy of my own home, from making a personal inquiry of an attorney? If I could find someone to help Mrs. Kayser, the sheriff’s office need not be involved at all.
That night, I wrote a letter to a lady lawyer I’d met once in New York. I didn’t even know what branch of the law she practiced, and had only shared a congenial dinner with her and her friends when I found myself at a hotel on another case. Nevertheless, I hoped she might be sympathetic to Anna Kayser’s plight, and I thought it best not to involve a Hackensack attorney whose loyalties would be unknown to me.
Dear Geraldine,
I write to ask your advice concerning a woman under my care at the Hackensack Jail. She has been committed to the lunatic asylum at Morris Plains and will no doubt have arrived there by the time this letter finds you, as I have no way of keeping her any longer. She is as sane as anyone I’ve ever met. Both her doctor and her husband are bent on locking her up, for reasons they cannot satisfactorily explain. Hasn’t she any legal rights?
I’m acquainted with a lawyer or two in Hackensack, but everyone here seems to take it as a matter of course that women go to the asylum for no apparent reason.
Your wise counsel would be received with gratitude.
I remain,
Yours in the inglorious pursuit of justice,
Constance Amélie Kopp
Deputy Sheriff, Bergen County
11
owing to the events of the last few days, I’d skipped my weekly probation visits. It was near the end of the month and I owed Judge Seufert a report.
The probation program was my idea: I perceived a need to keep troubled but not troublesome women (as I liked to call them) out of jail, or to get them released if the charges against them were unfair. Young girls in particular were, naturally, more willing to confide in me than in a male deputy, which meant that I was often able to get at the root of their problems and to help them to see a way out.
In some cases, this meant persuading a girl to return home to her strict father and overbearing mother, and to put more effort into her school-work. In other cases, I was able to negotiate some freedom for girls who wouldn’t have had any otherwise. I could persuade a judge that a girl who’d been reckless once might not be again, after she understood the consequences. I could negotiate a truce between a mother and daughter by persuading the mother to drop a charge of delinquency or incorrigibility in exchange for allowing the daughter a measure of freedom unheard of in the previous generation.
And for women who trafficked in the more ordinary styles of crime—theft, arson, fraud, and assault—I could investigate their background and, in some cases, argue that the crime was brought about by circumstances that wouldn’t occur again, if only the woman in question could be released and freed from her association with the unsavory characters who had led her astray.
As a result, I had acquired a growing list of women under my supervision, not at the jail, but out in Hackensack and the surrounding small towns. With my oversight they went to work, lived in respectable rooms, and comported themselves in such a way as to avoid running afoul of the law again. I don’t mind saying that I took a great deal of pride in the fact that I’d kept so many out of jails, reformatories, and state homes. It might sound bad for business for a deputy sheriff to keep people out of jail, but the plain fact is that a criminal mark will do nothing but impede a woman from her return to a respectable life. If I couldn’t put her on a better course, I would only see her in jail again and again, and that wouldn’t serve the public interest.
For this reason it had become a regular part of my duties to carry a little dark green notebook with me and to visit these women. Once a month I wrote a report that celebrated their small triumphs and commiserated over their minor setbacks. Judge Seufert, to whom I was required to submit the reports, told me that he enjoyed them on their literary merits alone. He looked forward to my monthly missives as one would a new installment of a Sunday serial. I’d begun to suspect that he agreed more readily to release women to my care simply to see the cast of characters expanded.
I made my rounds on no particular schedule, preferring to catch my probationers by surprise. Fortunately, both of my Hawthorne girls were at home when I stopped by.
I found Fanny Langer in front of the shop where she worked, washing down the windows with a wad of newspaper.
“I have a story for your little book,” she called when she saw me. She put her newspaper down and wiped her hands on a canvas apron that was so large it wrapped around her twice.
“I’m glad to hear it,” I said. I had trained my girls to produce some amount of descriptive detail on command, knowing how it would please Judge Seufert. It wasn’t enough to merely jot down that they were in good health and staying out of trouble: he liked a story with a moral and an uplifting conclusion.
Fanny walked over and stood on her toes to look into my notebook as I wrote. “First, you should put down that I turned seventeen last week, and some of the neighbors brought over a little cake. Don’t you see, that means that I’m making friends and that I’m well-liked.”
This girl was quite the self-promoter. I wondered if she’d considered going into sales. I wrote that down and asked her if there was anything else to tell.
“There is, and you’ll like it so much! I’m allowed to run the cash register now. I’ve been doing it for two weeks, and not a penny has gone missing.”
“I would never expect otherwise,” I said.
Fanny was no thief, and I knew it. She got into trouble when she worked for a junk dealer who could neither read nor write. For that reason Fanny handled his check-book, indicating where he was to make his mark when a check had to be written. After only a few short weeks she made a check out to herself, knowing that he couldn’t tell the difference. A watchful bank clerk told the junk man about it, and Fanny was arrested.
That was not the entire story—of course, it wasn’t! Fanny couldn’t have told the truth to a male officer, but she made her confession to me on the
first night. The girl had no family to speak of, her mother having died a few years earlier and her father gone to Cleveland to pursue a business opportunity. Finding herself without a roof over her head, she was obliged to rent a room at the back of the junk dealer’s shop.
It’s easy enough to guess at what came next. The man began paying unwelcome visits to her late at night. She took the money because she couldn’t see any other means of escaping and starting over in some new position.
I had a little difficulty explaining the matter to Judge Seufert in language suitable to the formalities of the court, but he caught on readily enough and agreed that I might find another position for Fanny. A shop-woman in Hawthorne (known to my brother’s wife, Bessie, who worked a little persuasion in the form of flattering words and raspberry preserves) proved sympathetic to the situation and was willing to give Fanny a job as long as it didn’t involve handling cash. The junk dealer agreed to drop the charges, provided the money was repaid. Fanny took a room above the shop; worked diligently at sweeping, dusting, and other such chores; and gradually discharged her debt.
It was a relief to see Fanny doing so well. “Keep this up, and I’ll write you out of my green book for good,” I told her. I stepped inside to have a word with the shop-woman, and then let them get back to their business. I didn’t like to keep anyone too long if there weren’t any problems. The reward for sticking to the rules should be that the deputy sheriff isn’t hanging around all day.
My next stop was just a few blocks from my brother’s house, where I looked in on Katie Carlson, a Swedish girl arrested for waywardness. Hers was an unusual case to fall under my jurisdiction, as it hadn’t originated in Bergen County, but in Philadelphia. Katie had gone before a lady judge at the new girls’ juvenile court established in that city on charges filed by her parents. She was out of control, they alleged, and had been staying out all night at dance halls and coming home under the influence of liquor.