by Amy Stewart
I hadn’t so much as glanced at the barn lately, much less walked around behind it to see what Norma was up to. I had noticed the accumulation of little pasteboard and wooden models of the cart, as cunning as children’s toys, lined up along our mantle, but I wasn’t prepared to have revealed before me a full-sized working vehicle. Norma pulled off the canvas with a theatrical flourish, and I must admit that I gasped.
“It’s finished! It’s fully built.” I walked around it in amazement.
“Of course it’s built,” Norma said. “What do you think I do around here all day?”
“It’s . . . well, it’s so beautifully put together.” I had no idea that my sister knew how to do anything in the way of finish carpentry. Of course, she did the rough work around the farm all the time: replacing fence posts, shingling the roof, shoring up a sagging porch step, and so on. But this went well beyond any of that.
Norma had built a fully functioning wheeled cart, longer than it was wide, with a coachman’s seat up front and a rather luxurious pigeon loft behind. From the rear, a pair of wooden doors swung open to reveal two rows of nesting boxes, three sets of perches for the birds to roost, and a miniature ladder that led to a wire cage on top. Inside, on the floor, was a sliding wood panel that, when opened, revealed its purpose: the bottom of the cart was made of sturdy wire mesh so that the interior could be more easily cleaned and drained.
Every bit of it was perfectly done. The doors aligned just so, the hinges and locks moved silently, and there was not a bit of light between any board. I’d ridden in any number of buggies more cheaply made than Norma’s pigeon cart.
“If I’d known you could do a thing like this,” I said, “I would’ve had you repair our buggy when it was smashed a couple of years ago. Think of all the trouble it would’ve saved us.”
“I didn’t know how to do any of it until our buggy was smashed,” Norma said, a bit impatiently. “Didn’t you notice that I worked alongside the man from the dairy every day and helped him to do the job?”
I had to admit that I hadn’t. I was guilty of not paying a great deal of attention to what Norma did, as I found so many of her activities and interests to be perplexing or even distasteful.
“Well then, you aren’t very observant, for a lady detective,” Norma said. “But now you can see for yourself how the cart is meant to work and how it will be of such use to the Army. We’ll take it to the Plattsburg camp, along with a few pigeons, just to show them how it runs. They’ll probably want to keep this one, but I won’t let them. I’m drawing up the plans, and they can put a dozen of them together themselves if they like. It will give them something to do besides marching the Harvard men up and down in straight lines.”
“Have you taken it out on the road yet?” Fleurette asked.
“We’ve only just finished it,” Norma said. “Carolyn was supposed to come for lunch, and we were going to have our first trial with her horse. Dolley needs to be reshod so I don’t like to make her do it.”
We walked around the cart a bit more, climbed aboard, and even helped Norma to bring a few pigeons over. She showed us, a little boastfully, the cleverest bits of her design. The wire cage atop the cart detached from the rest of it and could be used to ferry pigeons back and forth from their home loft. There was even a ladder clipped to the side of the cart to make it easier to take the cage on and off.
By the time we finished loading three dozen pigeons into the cart, Carolyn turned up in her automobile.
“I thought you were to bring your horse,” Norma said crossly, by way of a greeting. I never understood how Norma had managed to make a friend, but Carolyn seemed impervious to her most abrasive qualities.
“If you had a telephone I wouldn’t have to come all the way out every time there’s a change in plans,” Carolyn returned, far more cheerfully.
“There won’t ever be telephone wires in the countryside, and I’m glad of it,” Norma said.
“Why don’t you two exchange pigeons,” Fleurette said, “and then you can send notes back and forth when you need to tell each other something?”
“We do, of course, but I sent the last one yesterday,” Carolyn said, “so I’m out of stock.”
Norma and Carolyn turned their attention to the cart, and I followed Fleurette inside.
“You have to convince her to leave her cart behind,” Fleurette said. “We can’t show up at the Plattsburg camp with that thing.”
“They’d never forget you,” I said.
She could still pout and toss her hair around, even at the age of nineteen. “It’s not the sort of thing I wish to be remembered for.”
26
nothing could’ve been more disadvantageous to Sheriff Heath at that moment in the campaign than another jail-break, but when it happened, he took it remarkably well, and in fact seemed to enjoy himself more than he had in weeks. I suspect he was simply glad to be back at the business of running the jail, and talking to the inmates like he used to, rather than going out glad-handing with the voters.
The inmate in question was Harry Core, a jewel thief known for never cracking a window or forcing a door. At the scene of his most recent robbery—a jewelry store in Hackensack—he’d climbed in from the roof and made a hole in the ceiling so small that the police said only a boy or “a very slight dwarf” could’ve slid through it.
He was caught trying to sell the jewelry in Newark. With some pride he confessed that he never went inside a store to rob it, but instead rigged up a set of grappling-hooks and lowered them from his perch in the ceiling. This allowed him to smash the display cases and fish the jewelry out with a dexterity that even the police admired. Harry Core was a clever man and friendly, and had been a model inmate—until now.
I came upon Sheriff Heath talking to Harry Core in one of the interviewing rooms. A guard was watching from the doorway and nodded for me to come on down and listen in. From the conversation I surmised that a metal file fell through a hole in Harry’s hip pocket at breakfast and dropped to the floor, in full view of the guards.
“Come on, Harry,” Sheriff Heath was saying when I looked into the room. “What was the idea, trying to saw your way out of my jail-house?”
Harry Core kept his eyes down. He was a short man, stout, and stronger than one might, at first, give him credit for. He wore a neatly trimmed beard and had come in wearing a fine suit of the sort rarely seen at the jail, even among the better class of thieves. He sat calmly in his shirtsleeves, his cuffs rolled up, showing meaty arms and ropy blue veins. His cheeks were a robust red and I could see the blood lifting and pumping in his neck. Most men grew pale and listless in jail, but Harry possessed a remarkable physical vitality even after several weeks behind bars.
“Are you sure you won’t tell me where you got that file?” the sheriff persisted. “I know you didn’t have that when you came in. My guard Louis here searched you himself, didn’t you, Louis?”
The guard agreed that he had, in fact, given the inmate a thorough search.
“Then someone brought it to you,” said the sheriff. “Who was it? You’ve had no visitors.”
Harry Core shrugged, offering the sheriff a bemused smile, as if they’d stumbled into an insignificant little puzzle that neither would be able to solve. In my time at the jail I’d noticed that some professional criminals—the kind who get into it for the money, not for revenge or love or passion—had no trace of menace about them and wanted only to do their jobs and to do them well. Some of them made for fairly pleasant company and weren’t too put off about being locked up for a short stretch, jail being a hazard of the profession. Harry Core was that type of man.
The sheriff leaned back in his chair and gave a sigh of regret. “Well, it’s a shame you had only that little file to work with. There’s nothing worse than being poorly equipped for a job.”
Harry seemed interested in the idea that someone else might be to blame. “How do you mean?”
Sheriff Heath looked up at the ceiling and worked his j
aw back and forth as if to contemplate the question. He was a somber and dignified man, but he could put on an act when it suited him.
“Well, it just wasn’t much of a file, that’s all,” he said. “It might’ve worked on soft metal, but in here you’re going up against case-hardened steel. Whoever brought this to you didn’t know a thing about my jail.”
Harry filled his cheeks and blew out a puff of air in exasperation. “Either he didn’t know, or he didn’t take the time to find out.”
“Now, that’s just the problem, and we see it in here every day, don’t we, Louis?”
The guard nodded eagerly but didn’t dare say a thing.
“People just don’t take the time to think a job through,” the sheriff continued. “He didn’t even give you any oil.”
“Oil? Now, what’s that for?” Harry was obviously disgusted at how ill-equipped he’d been.
“Or some lard. Even bacon grease, but we haven’t had bacon in a while, have we? It makes the file smoother. Gives you a little better action.”
“You see, I did not know that,” said Harry in wonder.
“Well, keep it in mind if you ever get another chance. And next time, don’t carry it around in your pocket.”
“Oh, there won’t be a next time. Mackie’s gone off without me.”
“Already? Whereabouts?” the sheriff asked offhandedly.
“Chicago.”
“I don’t recall a fellow named Mackie. What else does he go by?”
Harry blinked fast and understood his mistake. “I don’t know any Mackie.”
Sheriff Heath flicked his eyes over to me so quickly that no one would’ve noticed unless they were watching for it. As soon as he was finished with Harry, we’d be back in his office, wiring the authorities in Chicago to watch out for a man named Mackie.
The sheriff exchanged a few more pleasantries with Harry. He had a way of staying on such cordial terms with the inmates that they were often startled into making a confession when they hadn’t meant to.
“If you think of anything else that might help us, just send for me,” Sheriff Heath said as he left.
“Happy to, Sheriff.” They shook hands like old friends. “Good of you to see me yourself like this. I only wish I’d had a drop of something strong to offer you.” He patted himself down as he said it, like a man searching for his flask in a coat pocket.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if you did,” Sheriff Heath said, and they both laughed at that.
Sheriff Heath handed Harry off to his guard, and I walked with him to his office.
“You’re in an awfully jovial mood for a man who’d just discovered his third escape attempt,” I said.
“I will miss the inmates,” he said.
“You’ll have congressmen for company instead. Aren’t they just as disreputable?”
“They’re less forthcoming about it,” he said.
“What are you going to do about Harry?”
“Harry’s all right,” he said. “We’ll take away some privileges and keep an eye on him, but he was never going to saw his way out of here.”
“I’m more concerned with how the file got in,” I said.
Sheriff Heath said, “People do smuggle things into jail. It could’ve been a delivery boy, or a visitor who signed in to see someone else. I’ll look into it, but a little contraband is inevitable.”
“Do you mean you’re not going to charge him? Isn’t it a criminal offense?”
We were at his office by then, but he didn’t invite me in. “If we charged him, we’d never keep it out of the papers,” he said. “There was no harm done, and no one knows about it except you and Louis.”
“And a few other guards, and most of the inmates. You won’t be able to keep this quiet.”
“Are you running my campaign now?”
How quickly I’d fallen into the trap of fretting over what the reporters would say, and what the public would think!
“Never mind,” I said. “By the way, I booked in a rather elegant lady a few days ago. I suppose you know her.”
“Everyone knows her.”
“Apparently an unkind word from Mrs. Pattengill might influence your supporters. Mrs. Heath asked me to make her comfortable. I’m told she has important friends.”
He shook his head and said, “Mrs. Pattengill’s friends have already deserted her. You know as well as I do that when people go to jail, they’re like ghosts who don’t yet know they’re dead. Their friends forget all about them and carry on with their own lives. Don’t give her any special treatment. Cordelia might not know it, but the worst thing that can happen in a campaign is any accusation of favoritism. I don’t want a single exception to the rules for Mrs. Pattengill. She must do her chores and wear her uniform just like the other inmates.”
I was relieved to hear that he and I were in agreement on this. “She will. It sounds like a strange case—some sort of charity fraud?”
“It’s an old con. She just happened to get caught.”
27
mrs. pattengill didn’t take well to the rigors and deprivation of an inmate’s life. She told anyone who would listen that she liked a hot lunch and a cold supper, but in jail it went the other way around, and she was quite taken aback that the kitchen couldn’t reverse its meal schedule on her behalf.
She liked a vinegar rinse in her hair twice a week and a cream for her complexion every night, but neither was supplied. To her astonishment, she was not allowed to telephone a friend and ask that these niceties be delivered.
“I’m starting to understand why they don’t issue us mirrors,” I heard her call to Providencia Monafo, who lived in the cell next to her. “I’d rather not know what a sight I am these days.”
“That is not why you don’t have a mirror,” Providencia returned.
“Then is it because there are spirits that live inside the mirrors?” Mrs. Pattengill asked, with an attempt at gaiety in her voice. She was under the mistaken impression that Providencia was a spiritualist who had been arrested for fortune-telling, having either forgotten or chosen to disregard their conversation on the subject during the jail tour.
“No, they don’t give you a mirror because you might break it into pieces and slash at your neck.”
That was enough to put a stop to further conversations between Mrs. Pattengill and Providencia, which had surely been Providencia’s intention. I thought about chiding her for tormenting her new neighbor, but it occurred to me that she might well know best how to keep Mrs. Pattengill in line. There was no reason not to let her try.
I didn’t take Cordelia’s warning about Mrs. Pattengill seriously. The woman seemed to have no powerful friends or influential connections. She wrote no letters and had no visitors. She was quick to express her displeasure over the condition of her cell, the flavor of the food, the quality of the clothing, and all the ordinary inconveniences of jail life, which were, of course, considerable. It was always too hot or too cold. The men who lived on the four floors below us made noise day and night, and she groused that it interfered with her tranquility to hear them shouting at one another, arguing with the guards, coughing, spitting, groaning, snoring, and banging at the bars of their cells when they wanted attention.
“I was required by law to tolerate sleeping alongside one man who grunted and moaned and snored all night long, but I’m wholly unprepared to put up with eighty of them at a time,” she told me. “It’s unseemly.”
I made light of her complaints, which seemed insubstantial and even understandable from a woman in her position. I reminded her that we did all we could to treat our inmates decently, but that we couldn’t possibly provide all the comforts that she’d been accustomed to before her arrest. I was never strict with her, but I didn’t indulge her, either.
It was a pleasure, in those ever-shorter days near the end of October, to return to the routine duties that my position required. I went to see a few new probationers recently placed under my care. A girl had been arrested for shari
ng a hotel room with a man whom she claimed was her brother. I had to go to a great deal of effort to prove that they were, in fact, brother and sister. Once I did, the hotel’s house detective accused her of drunkenness, on the strength of two bottles of beer ordered by the brother but never opened. The entire business was ridiculous and I had no trouble in getting the girl freed. I would’ve rather not put her on probation at all, but Judge Seufert insisted, it being his opinion that the more girls under my supervision, the better, for the general welfare of the town.
Also under my care was a married woman accused of blackmail. Her method was to go into New York with a man, and then, once they’d crossed the state line, she’d threaten to summon a police officer and have him brought up on a white slavery charge. Her husband (a ruinously loyal man if there ever was one) came to her defense, and the men who’d fallen for the scheme were too embarrassed to give their testimony publicly. She, too, was released to my supervision, obliging me to stop in at unexpected times and see to it that she was at home and behaving as a wife should.
My inmates had troubles of their own, but it wasn’t the sort that elicited any sympathy from me. Ruth Williams, the actress accused of a little light house-breaking to pay for her supper, had managed to incriminate herself without ever saying a word, much less stepping outside her jail cell, and was now in more trouble than previously believed.
It came about like this: the room she’d once rented had been sitting empty owing to some repairs to the building, and when it was rented again, the new occupant tripped over a loose floorboard and found a cache of valuables hidden underneath. This led the tenant, naturally, to test the other floorboards and to investigate the deep recesses of the wardrobe, as well as the undersides of drawers and the backs of picture frames. All yielded valuable trinkets: ivory combs, ruby bracelets, engraved cigarette cases, and gold watch-chains.