Fallen Women

by Sandra Dallas

  And so it went with Lillie’s other dresses, the dressmaker muttering how she would have to alter the gowns, making Beret wish she had refused the clothes. It was bad enough the dresses were unflattering, but she felt uncomfortable in her sister’s garments. Finally, Beret tried on one of Lillie’s sensible ensembles, a suit of navy blue with simple lines. “Ah, at last, this suits you,” Mrs. Beaton said. She pushed and pulled and pinned. “I thought it too plain for your sister, but she looked striking in it.” She paused and added quickly, “And you will, too, Miss Osmundsen.” As the woman used chalk to draw a line down a seam to show where the jacket should be altered, she turned to Varina. “I made you a suit very nearly like this one. It was from the same material. Do you wear it? It was larger, of course. You hardly have the figure of a young girl.” The woman must be a very good dressmaker, Beret thought, or Varina would not have stood for the insult.

  “It is too severe,” Varina replied.

  “Then fetch it to me, and I’ll add a lace collar or a bit of trim to soften it.”

  Varina looked uncomfortable. “I do not care for it much,” she said, and appeared relieved when Nellie entered the room and said some problem required her mistress’s attention.

  The moment Varina was gone, the dressmaker said in a low voice, “I wonder your dear aunt can show her face. Her coachman’s deeds must be a terrible strain on her. Does she suffer?”

  Beret found the question no more appropriate than those asked at the luncheon, and she knew the dressmaker would savor her reply to share with other clients. “I believe everyone suffers when a human life is cut short.”

  Mrs. Beaton frowned. “Yes, but Mrs. Stanton, how is she taking it?”

  “As you might expect,” Beret replied.

  “Did she know her coachman was a killer?”

  “I don’t suppose she would have employed him if she had, would she?”

  “And the judge, what is his reaction?” the woman asked.

  “I haven’t inquired.”

  Mrs. Beaton looked at Beret sharply. “You act as if this man was of no consequence.”

  “Murder is always of consequence.” Beret was tired of the dressmaker’s persistence and wished the woman would swallow her mouthful of pins.

  The dressmaker sighed, and with a false sense of pity, she said, “Those poor girls. My church helps them. We have found farms to send them to so that they can leave their sinful lives, but they are never grateful. Some sneer at us when we offer them that opportunity. Others run away after a few days and return to Holladay Street.” She shook her head, apparently at the ingratitude.

  “Many of them come from farms. That is why they turn out,” Beret told her.

  “Well, Miss Lillie didn’t, did she?” the woman said, then asked, “Surely Mrs. Stanton feels responsible for her death, doesn’t she?”

  Beret, mindful that the dressmaker was sticking pins into the garment she was wearing, took a deep breath and said quietly, “I found violets in the garden this morning. My aunt insisted I pick them for my room. Aren’t they pretty?” Beret pointed to a small glass vase shaped like a flower basket. “Violets are the harbinger of spring, don’t you think?” She stepped out of the skirt then and laid it on the bed.

  Mrs. Beaton removed the pins from her mouth and thrust them into her pincushion. Then she pushed herself off the floor and gathered up her scissors and tape measure and stored them in her workbasket. Beret smiled benignly at the woman. No one would make her gossip about her own family.

  * * *

  Beret was disappointed that Detective Sergeant McCauley had not contacted her again, so the following afternoon, she left the house and walked to City Hall. She was delighted at how much the weather had changed in only a few days. Flowers had begun to emerge. There were daffodils and tiny white flowers like edelweiss, crocuses and violets in the yards she passed. A gardener trimmed bushes in front of a sandstone castle. Two nurses sat on a wall at the side of one of the mansions, gossiping while their tiny charges played in the grass. Beret nodded a greeting, and the two stood and mumbled, “Ma’am.”

  A groom slouched against a barn, smoking, his eyes sullen as he appraised Beret. He looked away as someone yelled to him from inside. The sun was warm on Beret’s shoulders, and by the time she reached the bottom of the hill, she had unbuttoned her jacket. The streets were dry now, although dusty, the air clean, the sun so bright it hurt her eyes. For the first time, Beret found Denver a pretty place, serene, quiet, so different from the bustle of New York.

  The activity picked up as she left the residential area, however. Beret found herself being careful of the carriages and wagons that rushed by, careless of pedestrians. A man astride a horse nearly knocked her down and did not have the courtesy to apologize or even to look back. Another doffed his hat impudently and Beret ignored him. Perhaps Denver was not so different from New York after all. Still, she enjoyed the walk, the chance to get out of the house and away from the stuffy drawing rooms of her aunt’s friends, and she was almost sorry to reach her destination. But she had come with a purpose, and would not delay it. She went into the building and down the stairs to the police department.

  Detective McCauley was not at his desk, and Beret wondered if she should have sent him a note, asking for an appointment. The reason she hadn’t was if he had ignored it, she’d have been in a quandary about her next move. She looked around the room but didn’t see the detective, so she inquired of an officer who was stationed near the door.

  “Mick? A bit of a hero, our Mick is today, ma’am. P’raps you know he killed the man what’s been troubling the whores … begging your pardon. I didn’t mean to suggest that’s a subject you’d be knowing about, a lady like you. I expect you’re one of his society friends. You wait over there at his desk if you want to. He’s talking to Chief Smith now. Shouldn’t be more than a minute. The chief don’t talk much, you know, but us boys has got to listen.” He guffawed.

  Beret thanked the officer and made her way across the room to Mick’s station and sat down on a hard chair. The desk was tidy, pencils lined up next to the pen with the dull nib, an open bottle of ink beside it. Government forms were stacked to one side, and in the center was what appeared to be the page of a letter. But when she looked closer, Beret saw that it was part of a police report. The first line was the tail end of a sentence begun on the previous page: “shot him once in the breast, and he fell onto the bed and was still. He had the knife in his hand yet. I asked a crib girl to find another officer, and in ten minutes—” Mick had obviously been interrupted in the middle of a sentence and left his desk. Beret would have liked to read the first part of the report, but she was mindful of the glances from the officers in the room. So she picked up a pencil and idly rolled it back and forth between her gloved fingers, trying to imagine what else the detective had written. She was doing that when Detective McCauley returned.

  “Miss Osmundsen,” he said, startling her, because she had been deep in thought and had not heard him approach.

  “Detective McCauley. I hope this is not an inconvenient time.”

  He glanced around his desk as if to see whether she had been snooping, then asked, “What can I do for you?” He was formal now, polite but a little distant, as if he were not pleased to see her. He gave the impression that he was busy, and Beret wondered if he’d done that on purpose.

  “I had asked when you came to tell us about Jonas whether we could talk again about the murders. Is this not a convenient time?”

  He thought a moment. “As good as any, I suppose,” he said, “but this is not the place for it. Come.” Beret stood, and the detective looked over his desktop again, then reached into his desk for something that he put into his pocket. He led her past the police officer with whom Beret had spoken earlier, saying, “We’ll be going now, Jim. Me and the lady’s having a bit of a talk.”

  “Your Irish has come back,” Beret observed.

  “Only when I’m around other Irishmen. If we try to talk li
ke civilized folks, they think we’re putting on airs.” He steered her up the steps, and they went outside into the sunshine and found a stone bench. “Does this suit, or do you want to go to Charpiot’s?”

  Beret sensed the detective was distracted, perhaps pressed for time, and replied that the bench was fine. She would have liked a more private place, where passersby wouldn’t intrude, but she seemed to have no choice. “We could talk at a more convenient time—”

  “No, no. I don’t know when that would be.” Mick cut her off. “Except for a few hours’ sleep, I’ve been at the station since I left you. There are reports to be made and interviews. I’ve been cornered by every newshawk in the city. Have you seen the papers?”

  “Only one, and the report was dreadful.”

  “Don’t bother with the others. Each is worse than the one before it. Will it offend you if I smoke?”

  Beret did not know he smoked. He had not done so before. She shook her head, and Mick took out a cigarette paper, sprinkled tobacco onto it, licked the paper shut. He lighted the cigarette, then exhaled. “I don’t smoke much, but this has been a trying time, and it relaxes me. What a pity you ladies can’t indulge.”

  “And what makes you think we don’t?” Beret asked.

  Mick laughed suddenly. It was not often that the man had laughed in her presence, and Beret was startled. She liked the warm sound of it. “Forgive me for being brusque. I have been under a great deal of pressure since I saw you last,” he said.

  “Of course. And I suspect you have little time for conversation, so I shall be as brief as possible. I want to talk about the murders, but first I must make a confession.”

  Mick gave her a curious look. “Not another visit to Hop Alley, I hope.”

  Beret smiled a little and shook her head. “I did not tell you that I saw my husband, that is, my former husband, Mr. Staarman, a second time. I encountered him in front of the Arcade. I had the sense he might have been lying in wait for me. In any case, he was quick to accost me.” She related the gist of her conversation with Teddy, then said, “I suppose it doesn’t matter now that we know Jonas and not Teddy murdered my sister. But I do not want you to think I deliberately withheld information from you.”

  “Why did you?” Mick asked.

  “I’m not certain.”

  “You must still care about him. Perhaps with your sister out of the way, you’ll take him back.”

  The remark was impertinent and Beret thought to rebuke him, but then for a moment, she wondered if he might be right. She had been lonely, and Teddy had once made her happy. There was a fine line between love and hate, she realized. But she replied, “No, I don’t think so.”

  They had not gotten off to a good start, and Beret thought she should not have come. It was obvious to her the detective was pressed for time and in no mood to humor her. But she was there, and this might be her only chance to talk to him. He would take on other investigations and have no need to interview her, and it was unlikely their paths would cross socially. So she smiled at him and asked, “Did you think all along that it was Jonas?”

  Mick shook his head. “I wish I could tell you so. I thought Jonas an odd fellow, but I was as surprised as anyone when I looked into his face after I shot him and saw who he was. Did you suspect him?”

  “I did not like him much, although he came to my aid in Hop Alley, and that makes me believe he was both good and bad.” She thought that over. “Mostly bad, I think. He frightened me at times, but no, I didn’t mark him as a killer. Looking back, I can see I missed signs. He followed me, you know, from the first day I arrived. He warned me to watch out for myself, and I thought that was strange. Then one night he came toward me in the library with a blanket in his hands. He claimed he was going to cover me, but I think now he wanted to smother me. It would have been so easy. I don’t know why he didn’t. He took out a knife he carried and must have sensed I was afraid of him. Perhaps he feared I knew too much.”

  “So no one was truly suspicious of him.”

  “That’s not quite true. There are any number of my aunt’s friends who told me yesterday that they did not trust Jonas and were not surprised to find he was a killer.”

  “Ah, of course. The I-told-you-sos. We frequently see them at the police station. Pity they don’t help us before a criminal is caught.”

  Beret laughed. She had put on her jacket before entering the station, and now she unbuttoned it, because the sun made her hot. She took off her gloves, too.

  “Do you agree now that Jonas killed both women?” Mick asked. He threw the cigarette butt into the street and seemed to relax.

  “It’s that very question about which I’ve come to talk to you. I would like to compare the two murders—that is, the two murders and the attempted murder—and see if we can draw that conclusion.”

  “I think I’d like to know that, too. Denver does not have so many murders, you know. And those we do investigate, well, we find the killer—or don’t, as the case may be—and go on to the next crime, without pausing to ask why. I’ve read of a new science that seeks to find the cause of people’s actions. I wish I knew more about it, because, like you, I’m curious about Jonas. Why do you think he did it, Miss Osmundsen?” Before Beret could answer, Mick stood. “Would you like to walk down to the river? It isn’t much of a river, not very pretty, but it’s all we have. It’s said about the Platte that it’s a mile wide and an inch deep, and a good part of that is mud. As I say, it’s not much to look at, but we could talk more privately there.”

  Beret liked that idea and stood, taking Mick’s arm, and the two walked a short distance until they stood at the edge of the South Platte. It was indeed an ordinary river, sluggish, and its banks were covered with sagebrush and thick bushes. Snow still lay on the ground in shady places, and Beret could see animal tracks across it.

  Mick stood in front of her, one foot on a broken branch, and leaned forward. “What reservations do you have about the two killings?” he asked.

  “There are certain similarities, of course. Both women were prostitutes. Both were blond. And the killer took items of jewelry.” Beret reached into her purse. “I found these in Jonas’s room in the stable, under a floorboard.” She handed Mick the cheap earrings.

  “They were Sadie’s, I suspect,” he said, tossing the earrings in his hand. “We’ve discovered that killers sometimes take such souvenirs. They fondle them later on to relive their triumphs, for to a man like Jonas, I think, that’s what murder is—triumph and power. At least, that’s what I’ve come to believe.”

  Beret nodded, thinking that over. “The hiding place held only these. My sister’s earrings were not there.”

  Mick looked off to the river as he considered what Beret had told him. “Perhaps Jonas hid them elsewhere. A stable is a big place.”

  “Yes.”

  “Or he could have sold them. They were diamonds, after all.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “You are not convinced?”

  Beret shrugged. “It seems Jonas would have wanted his plunder close to him. As you said, it is not the jewelry’s monetary value so much as the souvenir’s ability to let him relive the murder. Besides, I do not believe he could have sold the earrings so quickly. They are distinctive, and surely he would know the police were on the lookout for them.”

  “You may be overanalyzing.”

  “I may be. We criminologists do this.” Her eyes shone at her little joke, and it pleased her that Mick smiled. “But there is one other thing. You told me that whoever killed my sister seemed to care about her, placing her hands over her breast and covering her with her robe. We saw for ourselves that no such gestures were made with Sadie. It’s almost as if my sister were killed by someone she knew, while Sadie was a random victim.”

  “Jonas might have had more time with your sister. And he knew her. Besides, if she was his first killing, he might have felt remorse. He was more jaded the second time.”

  “I suppose that explains it.” Bere
t picked a weed and stripped its leaves, then twirled the stalk between her fingers.

  Mick sat down beside her and took the remnants of the weed out of Beret’s hand, throwing it away. He asked what else bothered her.

  “The why of it.”

  “That’s always a question, isn’t it? You know human nature as well as I do, rather better, I think, because of your work. But do you want to know what I think?” When Beret replied in the affirmative, Mick continued. “Jonas was a complex young man with an abnormal devotion to your aunt, because she’d saved his life and took him in. I suspect everybody he met before that rejected him, including his mother. He might have seen your sister as a threat to your aunt, someone whose intemperate ways—and because I knew of her socially, I was well aware of them—would cause your aunt grief. He thought he was doing your aunt a service in eliminating her. Or maybe he intended only to talk to her and something she said unleashed his rage.” He grinned and added, “I think I am talking like a criminologist.”

  Beret started to interrupt, but Mick held up his hand. “Let me finish. I think it’s more likely that he was in love with her or, if you will, lusted after her, and went to Miss Hettie’s for carnal reasons. Your sister might have rejected him, and for him it brought back all the unhappiness of his young life. Jonas was a complicated fellow, because of his mother and because of his looks, and he would have taken offense. Maybe he only wanted to slap your sister, but things got out of hand.”

  “You do indeed know something about the new science of analyzing actions,” Beret said as a compliment.

  “I think Jonas might have enjoyed killing. I suspect he hated women, all women except your aunt, because they laughed at him, and this was his way of getting revenge.” Mick laughed a little self-consciously. “I could be far from the mark.”