Determined to get an audience with Mr. Pulitzer, who had just returned to New York from abroad, filled with pride and persistence I hurried through the newsroom. I was not about to go back home defeated. Instead, I plowed through like a steadfast ship, its bow breaking water, keeping my chin high and carefully lifting my skirt off the floor at least an inch to keep the bottom from being fouled by tobacco juice that didn’t reach the spittoons.
My heart had been pounding and I was thrilled to have stepped into a realm where stories of life and death, the stock market running amuck, fame and disgrace came to life as reporters yelled back and forth at their editors and a boy ran up and down the aisle grabbing copies from the reporters so they could rush them to the copy editors.
Nothing has changed.
Now, over three years later and having earned my salt with stories written down the street and around the world, I still must face the stares of several dozen men as I, a woman, dare to invade their territory.
Once again I put my chin up an extra inch, but I can’t help wonder how Hailey took the animosity and joking here in London. I had already broken in the newsmen in New York to a feminine presence, so she didn’t face as much prejudice as she would have had to experience here.
Their stares and jabs would probably make someone as sensitive as Hailey feel like she was walking onto the battlefield with bullets flying all around her—a reflection that hits me again with my editor’s assertion that she hadn’t been ready for a newspaper reporting job, especially in London, the hub of the newspaper world for all of Europe.
Having to walk past these men every day without having proven herself capable of doing the job, as I did with a sensational story, would chip away at any person’s soul no matter how strong they are, and Hailey was innocent in a beautiful, soft way.
“May I help you, madam?” a young man sitting behind the desk asks.
“Yes, I’m from The World in New York. I’m going to our office here.”
“You must be Nellie Bly.”
“Yes, I am. How did you—”
“Recognize you? From a newspaper clipping Hailey—Miss McGuire had. She spoke of you often. I’m very sorry about—about what happened.” The young man stammers and blushes, then gets up to hold open the gate for me. “It’s a pleasure meeting you.”
“Thank you.”
“If I can assist you in any way, please let me know.”
A thought hangs with me as I go up the stairs. Hailey was a bright and attractive young woman and pregnant. Knowing Hailey, the young man doesn’t appear to be a candidate for her lover … but, he might have gotten close to her or even simply went out of his way to observe her. I must stop and chat some more with him on my way out because he might be a wealth of information.
With a key I brought from New York, I unlock the door and enter.
The room is a cubbyhole, big enough for a rolltop desk against the wall to my right, three wooden filing cabinets against the wall to the left, and a dirty window allowing a bit of dull gray light in between.
Beside the office door is a metal umbrella stand that has one large black umbrella in it; above it is an empty wooden coatrack with a man’s hat and a rain slicker.
A chair on rollers is in front of the desk. A bookcase and stacks and stacks of faded newspapers and newspaper clippings occupy every space something else isn’t taking up. Even the filing cabinets are piled high with newspapers. Cobwebs make up the rest of the furnishings. I just pray no spider rears his ugly head while I’m here. I hate spiders.
On top of the desk is a soft blue vase filled with pink roses, Hailey’s way to add cheer and femininity to this cluttered, messy, male office that is laden with the heavy smell of tobacco smoke imbedded in the wood.
The roses are wilted. I wish I had new ones to replace them. I hate looking at the dead roses—they speak of Hailey’s death. But, they were Hailey’s and I am not prepared to trash them.
I roll up the top of the desk. Shoved into the back right corner is a pipe rack holding four pipes; next to it is a closed, round-metal tin that contains tobacco. The desk has coffee mug marks, cigarette burns, and ink stains, all the signature of the correspondent who regularly occupies the office.
The desktop is cleared of most paperwork, which surprises me because there’s only a small space to lay items and Hailey wasn’t better than any other newspaper person, myself included, in keeping manageable the notes, pictures, and other items we gather for stories.
Either Hailey wasn’t working on any stories for sometime leading up to her death or she came to the office and cleaned up her desk before killing herself.
She was an orderly person and it isn’t beyond the realm of reasonableness to conclude that she would straighten up her desk before ending her life. I’ve heard of people who washed their laundry before killing themselves.
Going through the desk drawers, I find her “hot news” folder—a slim red leather envelope purse. Hailey had admired the one I have that I keep my current work in. As a surprise going away gift, I gave her one.
There’s very little in it, some notes about a society wedding, a minor incident at sea between a British freighter and German warship, the failure of a medium-size London bank. Not the sort of news interesting to Americans that she was expected to dig up. I recognized the articles as “fillers” that reporters on deadlines keep to fill in on those days when all the good stories are hiding from you.
She must have been so depressed she wasn’t working on anything of importance in the days before her death.
As I pick up a pencil to tap the eraser against my teeth, an old habit of mine, I notice the eraser is blackened. It’s been burnt.
Why would an eraser head be burnt?
I look under the desk for a wastepaper basket. Voilà! Someone had burned paper in the metal basket and stirred the ashes with the pencil.
Another “why?” pops into my head. Why would Hailey do this? Reporting isn’t that competitive. What was so important to Hailey that she not only had to burn it, but destroy it completely?
Or … did the man who ruined Hailey’s life pay a visit to the office to destroy evidence of their relationship? Or her murder?
Here I go again. Am I barking up the wrong tree or have I discovered something? My problem is I don’t want to face what I have been told. I want to find another truth.
It’s time to speak to the gatekeeper.
9
My instinct about the young man at the gate is that he is or was infatuated with Hailey. The pale, thin young man with gold-rimmed glasses strikes me as rather shy and perhaps even a little timid. Hailey had a more outgoing personality. I can’t see them as a match.
Exuberant, excited by life, and even rather adventurous, Hailey was more likely to fall into a swoon over a knight in shining armor than a mild-mannered clerk. But that doesn’t mean they hadn’t become friends or that he didn’t quietly observe Hailey and know more about her than she even suspected.
“Did you find everything satisfactory?” he asks as I come out the gate and he rises to speak to me.
“Somewhat. Mr.…?”
“James Anderson. Please, call me James.”
“James, do you know what trolley I can take to Hailey’s boardinghouse from here? With the rain, if it’s much the same as in New York, there is little possibility of me catching a taxi.” I didn’t give him the address because I am curious as to whether he knows where she lived.
“You’re so right.” He chuckles and his face brightens up, “Hailey and I used to laugh about how the cabs mysteriously disappeared off the streets the minute it just starts to sprinkle.”
“You shared taxis?”
“No, neither of us could afford getting to and from in a hansom. We rode the same trolley, number eighty-seven. Her boardinghouse is just a couple of blocks from mine and the trolley stopped in between. Go to your left when you leave the building; the trolley stop is three blocks up the street. I see you are already outfitted with an umb
rella. A must in London.”
I hold up the black umbrella that was in the basket. “I requisitioned the one from our office. James, I need to know the stories Hailey was working on, but I found very little in her office. Did she by chance mention anything to you?”
“No, she wouldn’t have spoken openly, not with them being able to hear.” A jerk of his head tells me that “them” are the reporters in the newsroom.
“She never mentioned anything at all?”
“No, I’m sorry.”
“Do you know who she might have been dating?”
He shook his head. “No idea. I suspected she was seeing someone because she was so happy and excited.”
“She spoke about the person?”
“No, not really. It wasn’t anything she said, but how she acted. And there were the flowers.”
“Flowers? She received flowers from a man?”
“Yes. I don’t know who sent them, but I can tell you the man was wealthy.”
“How do you know this?”
“The flowers were exotic. Not your normal roses or daises.”
“Any chance you remember the name of the florist?”
“That won’t do you any good.”
“Excuse me? Why would you say that?”
Instead of responding, he instantly blushes and looks down at his shoes.
I gently touch his arm. “You were fond of Hailey, weren’t you?”
“Ya—yes,” he stammers.
“You wanted to make sure no one would take advantage of her, so you asked the deliveryman who had sent the flowers?”
He nods. “Yes, but he didn’t know. A messenger always came with instructions and payment.”
I bit my lip as I think about that. It sounds very much like the actions of a married man.
“Miss Bly, did—did Hailey ever mention me in her letters to you?”
“Yes, she did,” I lie. “She was very fond of you.”
“I was very fond of her, too.”
“I appreciate your help, James. If you remember anything, please contact me. I will be at the Langham Hotel for the next few days.”
I turn to leave and stop as he says, “I don’t believe it.”
“Believe what?”
“That she killed herself.”
I take a sharp intake of breath, trying not to expose my feelings. “Why don’t you believe it? People kill themselves every day.”
“Aren’t people supposed to get depressed over a period of time, slowly getting worse, and then finally ending it?”
I almost blurt out, “Not if they’re pregnant!” but hold my tongue because I don’t want to damage his memory of Hailey. Instead I ask, “What do you mean?”
“She wasn’t depressed. She was excited … even secretive.”
“About what?”
“Don’t know. But she acted like any of these reporters act when they think they have a big scoop. They go around like they’re holding their breath. They’re dying to tell someone, but don’t dare even give a hint.”
“When did you last see Hailey?”
“Two days before the police say she killed herself.”
“Two days. Were there other times when she didn’t come to the office for days at a time?”
“Not that I recall.”
“And she didn’t appear depressed?”
“No. I’m telling you she was secretive.”
“As if she was onto a big story?”
“Yes. I’d swear by it. It was like she wanted to blurt something out but couldn’t.” He gave me a long hard look. “What do you think, Miss Bly? Why did she do it? Why did she throw herself into the river and—”
“Everyone is different,” is all I can manage before I flee out the door.
10
Never have my feet moved so fast to remove myself from a building and I keep walking fast once I hit the street—very fast. I’m not hurrying somewhere, but fleeing the suspicions of the love-stricken James.
Holy mackerel! And I thought my paranoia runs rampant.
I hadn’t seen Hailey during the days leading up to her death, but James had and his impression of Hailey’s mood—that clamming up by a reporter on a hot lead, but dying to share—is exactly how I act and exactly how I would expect Hailey to have conducted herself.
Face it, I tell myself. You just don’t think Hailey killed herself. And James inflamed your suspicions.
What if Hailey’s excitement wasn’t about a scoop? What if her excitement was about the fact that she had found out she was pregnant? And the man she believed loved her lied and told her he would marry her? And killed her instead?
Nonsense? But I don’t know. My paranoia gone wild? Maybe. But James had added not just his own impressions and feelings about Hailey, but a couple of curious facts: Hailey had not been around the office for two days before she killed herself. And the last time he saw her she had been in an elated mood.
I chew on the information because it is so inconsistent with the way I, like James, imagine the character of a suicidal person to be. While it is a given that her mood could have changed radically over a period of forty-eight hours, the state of her office adds another puzzling dimension: The office had been cleaned out. That is the only way I can characterize it in my own thoughts. Cleaned out as if someone was not planning to return to it.
While some people might be tidy about their possessions even when their head is full of killing themselves, James told me that Hailey had been in a very high mood the last time he saw her, two days before she died.
If that were the case, then Hailey would have cleaned out the office at a time when she appeared to a coworker as having a pleasant—even elated—disposition.
I shake my head. The contradictions are rattling my brain. If it isn’t likely she would have cleaned out the office when she was in a good mood, then someone else came afterward and did it. My prime candidate for the mysterious someone would be the lover fearing scandal.
As far as getting access to the building without James noting him, that could have been accomplished any number of ways. In fact, I should have asked him if any strangers had been inside the building or if anyone else had obtained access to Hailey’s office besides myself.
The brown study I’m in about Hailey almost makes me miss the trolley James told me to take. It’s crowded and I’m pushed into a woman next to me as the rail car sets off with a jerk. She pushes back and then nudges me.
“Look at that foolish man.”
A man with a bowler hat is running frantically to catch the trolley. He grabs a handrail at the rear corner of the car and nearly slips under as he loses his footing but hangs on and pulls himself up to get footing on the step.
“He’s going to get himself killed one day. I saw it once with my own eyes. A man tried to do the same thing, running after the trolley and jumping on while it’s moving. Only he wasn’t as lucky. Raining like today; the poles were slippery. He lost hold and he went under. It was awful. He was crushed to death by the wheels.” She shakes her head. “Mark my words, one day he’ll end up with the same fate.”
She’s right; he had been foolish. I just hope that whatever his hurry is, it’s worth risking his life for.
11
Four other passengers get off at my stop, including the man in the bowler hat who had defied death to get aboard. He had ignored the verbal jabs of other passengers about his feat and seems a surly type.
Even though the rain has basically stopped, the air still feels wet, as if it has soaked into my clothing. With Hailey’s boardinghouse a long block up the street, I’m glad I took the umbrella.
The neighborhood of row houses reminds me of the large brownstones in Manhattan, except these are older and were more presentable decades past. A bit drab and blackened by the coal soot that is the bane of modern living, most of the houses need tender loving care. Many have been turned into boarding homes.
I’m puzzling over what to say to Hailey’s landlady and mentally kick myse
lf for not getting a note from the inspector giving me permission to examine her room and dispose of her effects.
I was so distraught over Hailey’s suicide note it slipped my mind. Saying I’m a coworker probably wouldn’t be the best approach.
I’m still wondering what to say when the door is answered by a young maid.
“I’m Hailey McGuire’s sister from America,” I tell her. The lie flows naturally off my tongue. I did think of her as a sister. “I’ve come to collect some of her belongings. Would you kindly take me to her room?”
This is not a complete lie, I do need to select clothing for Hailey’s funeral, but I also want to go through her things and see if I can unravel the puzzle of her last days.
She appears hesitant and I fear my bluff isn’t going to work.
“Mrs. Franklin isn’t here right now.”
“I promised the funeral director I would get clothes for him today.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. She’ll be back shortly.”
“I’ll wait for her.” As soon as I am in the foyer, I add, “In Hailey’s room, if you don’t mind.”
I find the foyer a surprise. It is a little more pleasant than I imagined; nothing fancy, just well kept, though still boardinghouse impersonal. A large grandfather clock is to the left of the stairway to the second floor. A parlor is off to the right and the dining room to the far left. It’s much the same as the boardinghouses I’d lived in before I could afford an apartment; all were a little drab and lacking in the warmth a personal touch brings. A simple vase of flowers and brighter furnishings would give the place a more cheerful and homey look.
As we go up the stairs I ask the maid, “Did you and Hailey chat much?”
“We’re not allowed to mingle with the residents.” She gives me a look. “Your sister was a very nice person. She always said hello to me and would ask me how my day was. She didn’t treat me as a servant.”
The Formula for Murder Page 4