by Amy Stewart
“Did Norma leave you stranded again?” I asked, coming up behind her.
Fleurette spun around delightedly. “Oh, now we’ll have to hire a buggy.”
“I suppose you expect me to pay the fare,” I said.
“Either that, or we can walk, and you can carry one of my bags and Helen the other.” Fleurette beamed up at me. She always knew how to work me over. For my part, I didn’t mind being worked over once in a while. I was resigned to appreciating any sort of attention the girl would give me.
“I could’ve had my father drive us from the Paterson station, if I’d known we’d be such a bother,” Helen said, which naturally left me in the position of insisting that neither one of them could ever be a bother.
I went out to look for the old stableman who ran his buggy around town. Wyckoff was nothing but a village clustered around a rickety platform and a whistle stop, but there were still plenty of people in the countryside who didn’t run automobiles and had to be met at the train from time to time. I was fortunate to find the man at the stables next to the station and secure a ride home for us.
When we arrived at home, the girls flew up the stairs and ran down half an hour later, attired in matching gowns of angelic white. The dresses were made of a pearly silk chiffon, and draped about them in the fashion of the moment, with low-slung waists and hemlines a little higher than I might’ve liked.
“We’re ready for jail!” Fleurette announced.
“Is this your costume for the Salvation Army program?” I wanted very much to pull the gold ribbons out of their hair. They were too extravagantly dressed for a night at the county jail.
“There was a time when you would’ve been locked up yourself for wearing a dress like that,” Norma said pointedly as she glanced up at the girls and returned to scribbling on those cryptic drawings of hers.
“They’re perfectly respectable dresses for 1916,” I said.
Fleurette hopped over in her stockinged feet and showed us the pretty piece of old lace she’d added to the necklines and hems. “It’s even more modest with the lace, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so,” I said, although the lace seemed altogether too fine for a jail program. Since Fleurette’s tour on the stage with May Ward, her everyday wardrobe had grown more cosmopolitan and there seemed to be nothing I could do about it.
She and Helen had been practicing their duet for weeks. Captain Anderson had sent word asking the girls to rehearse a song called “Sinners Seeking Pardon.” Fleurette had a great deal of fun with it, and had been delivering the lyrics with so much gusto during their practice sessions that it came across as more of a barroom shanty than a hymn of repentance.
When looking back upon the past
Of wasted years of sin and shame
I wonder if the die is cast
And hell is written ’gainst my name
Those didn’t sound like suitable lyrics for a girl to sing, but the captain insisted. The second verse belonged to Helen. It began:
I know I’ve broken all thy laws
And am the vilest of the race
It only got more preposterous from there, as sweet and pretty Helen recounted the sins of a broken man in her unspoiled soprano. Nonetheless, it was the song the captain had chosen, and no one could say they hadn’t put a great deal of effort into learning it.
I only hoped the inmates would summon up some semblance of good manners and behave like gentlemen in front of the girls. Norma must’ve been thinking the same thing, because she said, “I don’t know why the sheriff has to recruit two girls to entertain the prisoners. They aren’t soldiers at the front. They’ve done nothing to deserve a concert.”
“It isn’t entertainment,” Helen said, as she spun around and admired her reflection in the darkened kitchen window. “It’s a program of moral enrichment.”
“I wouldn’t have thought your father would allow you to step foot inside of a county jail,” Norma said to Helen. “I don’t know why we are, either, except that we seem to be on ever more friendly terms with criminals. I half expect Constance to start bringing them home for supper.” Norma didn’t even bother to look up as she said that. She just let the words come out in one long breath, like a line she’d memorized.
I slid my foot over and nudged Norma’s under the table to get her attention. “I’ll be there to keep an eye on the girls. If any of the men misbehave, I’ll haul them upstairs and lock them in their cells.”
“Which is where they live, so I don’t see how that punishes them.”
19
norma’s disapproval notwithstanding, the concert went ahead the following night. I spent the day at home, putting my uniform in order and polishing my boots, and that evening the sheriff collected me, Fleurette, and Helen in his wagon following some business he had in Trenton.
We found Captain Anderson waiting for us in the Heath family’s sitting room, alongside Cordelia. He was sitting very stiffly in the manner of a military man—he’d fought in the Civil War—and although he must’ve been seventy-five years of age, only his wiry white hair betrayed him. He sprang out of a dainty armchair with the vigor of a much younger man and pounded the sheriff on the shoulder.
“Bob Heath! I hope it was only the company of these charming ladies and not some criminal mischief that delayed you,” he said, while the sheriff glanced at the clock. It was only one minute past six. We hadn’t been delayed at all.
Mrs. Heath rose from a stuffed chair whose armrests had been elaborately embroidered in a pattern of lilies and sweet peas. Since the campaign had commenced, there was a directness about her, and a sense of purpose, that had been missing before. Perhaps Cordelia’s mother had been right: to take an interest in her husband’s profession would make for a happier marriage, and would, perhaps, ease the strain between them. Cordelia had always carried around a terrible burden of unaired complaints. What she couldn’t say spoke louder than anything she ever did say.
That was certainly true when she turned to greet me. I was, at that moment, the most serious problem in her husband’s campaign, and we both knew it. But it wouldn’t do to speak of it in front of Captain Anderson, so she gave me only a slight nod and turned her attention to the girls, complimenting them on their gowns.
“Captain, these are your singers,” Sheriff Heath said. “Miss Fleurette Kopp is the youngest of the Kopp sisters, and this is her friend Miss Helen Stewart. They’ve been in rehearsals for weeks.”
Captain Anderson pressed each of their hands into his. “I know how much the men will appreciate your singing. It’s a good influence on them to hear spiritual music. I’ve seen with my own eyes how it can mend a man’s broken soul.”
“What about a woman’s broken soul?” Fleurette asked. “Aren’t we to sing for the ladies?”
It was impertinent of her, but I’d asked the same question when I first heard about the program. Sheriff Heath told me that I was the salvation program for the female inmates, and the men didn’t have anyone like me. I tried to point out that there was such a creature as a male deputy, too, but Sheriff Heath only waved me away and said that the other deputies weren’t suited to that sort of thing.
Captain Anderson looked down at Fleurette in astonishment. “Well . . . I . . . Our program is more for the hardened and unrepentant criminal. I don’t suppose your ladies’ matron sees many of those.”
“Oh, she has murderers and arsonists and all the rest,” Fleurette boasted.
“That’s true,” I said. “We have a kidnapper upstairs, too.” It seemed strange to brag about them, but I didn’t want to give the impression that my charges were any less deserving of concerts and special programs than the others.
Captain Anderson stared back and forth between me and Fleurette, entirely flummoxed by the idea that the female inmates might have need of his program. “Yes, well . . . It’s a fine thing to have a ladies’ matron. I was just telling Mrs. Heath that in so many places I visit around the country, the sheriff would be run out of town for taking
the side of the suffragists. You must tell me how you manage it.”
“Deputy Kopp manages just fine,” Sheriff Heath said.
If there was one thing Cordelia disliked, it was to have the conversation center around me for any length of time. “I’ve left my mother in the kitchen for too long,” she said. “We have a group of ladies joining us tonight, and she’s putting out the refreshments.”
“And I understand I’m to meet the next sheriff of Bergen County,” Captain Anderson said.
Sheriff Heath looked around as if he might find William Conklin hiding in a corner. “I expect we will, but let’s not wait on him.”
The sheriff led us through the jail’s massive kitchen and into the dining hall, where Cordelia’s mother was overseeing the setting out of refreshments along with her kitchen-maid.
I had only met Mrs. Westervelt once, in passing, when she and Cordelia’s father paid a visit to the jail. She was a woman of considerable vitality and intelligence, just as Bessie described her. She greeted me with a spirited handshake and said, “Your brother’s wife speaks so well of you that I just knew Cordelia had it all wrong. She hasn’t made it easy for you, has she?”
I looked around in surprise and was relieved to see Cordelia across the dining hall, out of earshot. Mrs. Westervelt had a frank and open face, and was obviously accustomed to speaking her mind. She went on before I had a chance to reply. “Cordelia is one of those women who isn’t sure of herself unless she has a grievance against someone else. She’s always been like that. I try to talk her out of it, and then her grievance is with me.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said, and very nearly meant it, as Mrs. Westervelt had a way of appealing to my charitable side. “I know the sheriff is glad to have her help with his campaign.”
Mrs. Westervelt was standing over a silver tray, dropping little slices of shortcake into frilled paper cups. “I’ve always said that it is incumbent upon a wife to take an interest in her husband’s affairs. Cordelia did nothing but oppose Bob, and I never saw the percentage in it.”
“I believe you’re right,” I said, although I didn’t care to know about the inner workings of Sheriff Heath’s marriage. Sheriffs are forced to live above the shop, so to speak, which makes for a disagreeable mingling of family and business.
Mrs. Westervelt brushed the crumbs from her fingertips and picked up the tray. “She’ll be a fine wife for a congressman. It’s a relief to her father and me.”
“I suppose you’ll miss her when she moves to Washington,” I said.
By then a guard was admitting the first of the guests to the dining hall. Cordelia swept across the room gracefully to meet them. Mrs. Westervelt stood in the doorway, the tray of shortcake still in her hands.
“Quite the opposite,” she said. “I’d rather have her far away and settled down contentedly, than underfoot all the time and unhappy about it. Grown children can be more of a nuisance than one might imagine. Consider yourself lucky not to have any.”
She meant to be friendly, but she didn’t know the truth. Although it was never spoken of in our family, Fleurette was in fact my daughter, but raised as my sister to prevent the scandal that inevitably follows when an eighteen-year-old girl carries on with a sewing machine salesman. It all happened a long time ago, and had become such a settled point in our family’s history that it caused nothing in the way of hand-wringing anymore. I might confess to indulging Fleurette a bit, but youngest siblings are often the pet of the family, so I saw nothing wrong with that, and Fleurette didn’t seem to find it unusual that one sister coddled her more than the other.
Regardless, as Mrs. Westervelt said those words, I was watching Fleurette and Helen work out their plans with Captain Anderson across the room. It wasn’t easy for me to imagine her far away, or settled down, or both.
About thirty women had paraded into the dining hall by then, in groups of three or four, and took their places at the tables nearest the front, which had been draped in Mrs. Heath’s good tablecloths for the occasion. They obviously thought it quite a novel experience to take their evening’s entertainment in the jail, where the spartan furnishings and drab walls made even their most sensible dresses look outlandish. The room rang with the rustling of coats, laughter, and exclamations over the cunning flower arrangements, which consisted of individual chrysanthemums sitting under little white cages meant to represent the steel bars of a jail cell. Even the air had changed: atop the odor of the soap we used to scrub the floors now floated a layer of a dozen different French perfumes.
It embarrassed me to see an evening at the county jail treated as a lark, when it was anything but for those incarcerated there. The sound of the women’s laughter could carry easily to the upper floors of the jail. I couldn’t help but wonder what the inmates must’ve thought. If this was what a campaign required, I was glad I wasn’t running for office.
As soon as the guests were furnished with their cakes and coffee, Sheriff Heath took the lectern and gave his opening remarks.
“Ladies, I’ve met most of you before. I see the wives of clergymen here, and of businessmen, and of more than a few elected officials. It’s the scandal of the year to have you all in jail at once.”
This was greeted with giddy laughter and the rattle of cups in saucers. Cordelia Heath and her mother, seated together at the front of the room, looked on approvingly. Helen and Fleurette had come around to the back to sit with me.
“You all know why we invited you here tonight,” the sheriff said. “When the good men of Hackensack put me into this office, they were voting for my ideas. I said that I could run the jail with a businessman’s efficiency, and I have. I took away the contract for kitchen service and put the inmates in charge, at a considerable savings to the taxpayers. Those who are able to do hard outdoor work put in honest labor at our farm in the summer, and stock the kitchen with corn and potatoes they grow themselves.
“But a jail can’t run on business principles alone. It must run on Christian principles, too. I want to get to the man before he goes to jail, and to give him something in the way of education and a model life to strive for. When my deputies go out to make an arrest, we visit the very breeding ground where crime is allowed to take root. It is a place of poverty, neglect, and ignorance.
“I do what I can for my inmates while they’re here, and I do it because I know they won’t be here for life. Every man who is housed upstairs is awaiting his release. If I’m to return him to the streets of Hackensack—to your community, where you live and raise your children—then I want to make sure he’s a better citizen upon his release than he was upon his arrest.”
It was a passionate speech, spoken with considerable eloquence. He’d been delivering some version of it all over the county in the previous few weeks, always to a round of applause. Even Fleurette and Helen were impressed and clapped mightily.
The sheriff continued. “And it isn’t just the men. I brought in a female deputy because the women we house on the fifth floor are mothers and daughters themselves. Their needs are every bit as great as the eighty or ninety men on the floors below them. Of course, there are practical considerations that make it a necessity to employ a jail matron. The female inmates shouldn’t be under the watch of a male guard. You wouldn’t want to be, if any of you were arrested.”
This brought a round of laughter from the audience again, and Sheriff Heath gestured for me to stand. I had a feeling that every woman in the place had heard about John Courter’s speech at the Board of Freeholders meeting, and the board’s refusal to award a medal for my actions, and as a result I felt more than a little self-conscious as I stood to let the ladies have a look at me.
“A female deputy can do something in the line of preventing crime before it happens, too. She can win a confession or issue a word of warning in all manner of situations where a male deputy would be ineffective. I’ll never forget the day, just last year, when she came to the aid of a factory girl whose mother had accused her falsely. I’m sure
I wouldn’t dare to get between a feuding mother and her daughter, but Deputy Kopp did, and it came out all right.”
That earned me a polite smattering of applause, but I couldn’t help but feel that he was trying too hard to defend me. He finished his remarks and told the ladies that they would be led upstairs for a tour of the female section while the rest of the inmates were brought down to the dining hall for Captain Anderson’s sermon. Once the men were settled, the ladies would be allowed to return and sit at the rear of the room to observe the program.
Helen hadn’t realized that she’d be taking a tour of the jail and she looked a little nervous about it. “Couldn’t we wait here?” she whispered to me.
“I’m afraid not,” I said. “Protocol requires us all to stay together.” I didn’t want to tell Helen that the women were being taken out of the room for reasons of safety. The jail had only one elevator for transporting inmates, which meant that they would be brought down in groups of ten or so. It took every guard on duty to manage the movement of the inmates, and it couldn’t be done if they also had to oversee a few dozen society ladies. By shepherding the ladies upstairs all at once, I could keep them confined until the men were settled.
And that’s exactly what I intended to do, until I stepped into the hall and found John Courter waiting for me in the shadows.
“There you are,” he said quietly—too quietly. He had something to say that he wanted only me to hear. We were alone for just a moment. I had the odd feeling that I’d been trapped.
I looked at him evenly and said, “Of course I’m here. I work here.”
He was eyeing me with such calculated calm. “You don’t work at the asylum, but you were there Wednesday last.”