Fallen Women

by Sandra Dallas

  * * *

  Nellie left the tea tray on the table and followed Beret upstairs. “I’m sorry you’re leaving, ma’am. It’s a shame Mrs. Stanton will be by herself with her husband in the jail and all. I don’t know how she’ll manage, poor lady.”

  “But I’m not leaving after all,” Beret told her.

  “Then you don’t need any help packing.” Nellie looked confused.

  “I would like to talk to you.”

  They had reached Beret’s room, and Nellie stopped in the doorway. “I don’t know, ma’am. Mr. William won’t like it.”

  “You do not work for Mr. William. You work for my aunt. Besides,” she added sympathetically, “you heard Mr. William say you should help me after tea was fixed.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Nellie said.

  “I have decided to stay on to be of some use to my aunt, Nellie,” Beret said, her voice rising, for she thought William might be listening. “Unfortunately, I had begun to pack my things myself, and now I’ll need your help unpacking them.”

  The two women went into the bedroom, and Beret closed the door. She sat down on the bed, and indicated the chair to Nellie, who chose to stand. “You have been my aunt’s maid for several years,” Beret began. “I should like to ask you about her health.”

  “Oh, she’s strong as a mule.”

  “I mean the health of her mind.”

  Nellie frowned.

  “Has her mind been a little unsettled? After all, she has been under a great strain. Is she acting … differently?”

  Nellie thought that over. “She hasn’t been happy, if that’s what you mean. She don’t eat much, and I see her in the parlor just staring out the window. But after what’s happened, well, that makes sense to me.”

  Beret was getting nowhere, so she asked, “Does Mrs. Stanton have trouble accepting the truth? What I mean is, when something bad happens, does she pretend otherwise?”

  “Oh, you mean like with Miss Lillie. As far as I could tell, she pretended she liked Miss Lillie, that she missed her after she left, although I know that wasn’t so. I mean how could she?”

  Beret was frustrated now, so she decided to be blunt. “Have you seen signs that your mistress has lost her mind?”

  Nellie smiled. “Oh no, ma’am. She’s just as good as she’s always been. Forgetful sometimes after she takes her medicine. You’d have to ask William about them.”

  “What medicine is that?”

  Before the maid could answer, there was a soft knock at the door, and William said, “Nellie, if you are finished, you should see to your mistress.”

  The girl turned quickly, grateful to have a reason to leave. Beret, however, thought that the butler had overstepped. It was he and not Varina who had summoned Nellie. She wondered if William did not trust her, and then she realized she did not trust him. There was something about him that bothered her. She flicked her fingers toward the door and said, “Go on, Nellie. We are finished with our conversation.” And before the girl could reply, she added, “Please don’t tell William about it.”

  “No, ma’am,” Nellie said, relieved.

  * * *

  The dinner party was the strangest event that she had ever attended, Beret decided the following day. The guests surely knew that Judge Stanton had been arrested, but they said not a word, while Varina chatted merrily about the heavy load the judge was carrying and how she worried about his health. One or two of the guests approached Beret with vague inquiries about her uncle, but Beret pretended not to understand, so the topic of conversation that was on all their minds was never spoken—until she and her aunt had taken their leave, Beret thought. Then the tongues would have wagged.

  As she rose that morning, still thinking about the evening before, Beret nearly laughed at her aunt’s remark on the way home, “I thought that went well.” The engagement had gone anything but well, but there had been no need to tell Varina how absurd the party was. It was enough that Varina had been pleased with her performance.

  But that was last night. Beret had to consider what she would do now. Mick had not returned, as he’d promised, and as her uncle had not come home, he must have been incarcerated.

  Beret dressed, thinking she would breakfast before her aunt awakened. She would decide how to proceed and be out of the house before Varina came downstairs. But when she went into the breakfast room, Beret found Varina sitting over coffee, a newspaper beside her plate. Beret had forgotten about the Denver newspapers. After all the space they had given to the Holladay Street murders, they would be frenzied over the judge’s arrest, and she was right. Reading upside down, she made out the headline PROMINENT JURIST ARRESTED IN HARLOT MURDER. And beneath it in smaller type, “Judge Stanton Had Been Considered for the Senate Seat.” She glanced at her aunt, who looked haggard, her skin gray. She had been through too much. “Damn the newspapers,” Beret said in an unseemly burst of anger.

  “They will recant, but you must act quickly, dear. I’ve asked William to have the carriage readied. I will take you to the police station to see Detective McCauley. You must explain to him that your uncle did not really confess, that he was not in his right mind.”

  “Joking?”

  “Of course.”

  “Are you going with me, then?” Beret asked. She did not want her aunt exposed to the squad room, to the stares and snickers and rough treatment. The reporters would discover who her aunt was and ask their rude questions.

  “Oh no. I will ask the new coachman to drive me about as Jonas used to do. We’d roam the city for an hour or more, sometimes the better part of the day, just the two of us, even in poor weather. He was such a fine lad. He never complained, because he knew it pleased me to drive about.”

  “Jonas?” Beret asked.

  “Of course, Jonas. You remember him.”

  The two women said no more, and after Beret finished her breakfast, she and her aunt donned black, for they were in mourning of a sort, and rode down Larimer Street in the Stanton carriage. Beret was let off at City Hall.

  Although it was early yet, the squad room was crowded with newspapermen, because the judge’s arrest had created a frenzy. Beret had heard the newsboys in front of City Hall hawking papers, yelling out the judge’s name in their high, shrill voices. As she alighted from the carriage, Beret had scanned the headlines, which were as brazen as the one she’d seen in the newspaper on her aunt’s breakfast table: PROSTITUTE’S KILLER PROMINENT JUDGE, SENATE CANDIDATE JAILED FOR KILLING SOILED DOVE, and simply THE MIGHTY ARE FALLEN. JUDGE STANTON MURDERER. The cacophony of boys’ voices grated on Beret’s ears, but her aunt, she observed, seemed oblivious to the commotion.

  Now as Beret stood in the doorway of the squad room viewing the newsmen milling around, she was glad that her aunt had gone off. Beret herself was unnerved by the men as she glanced toward Mick’s desk, hoping to spot the detective. He was not there. She searched the room, and as Beret did so, Eugene Latham, the reporter she had met on Holladay Street, near Sadie Hops’s crib, approached her.

  “Miss Osmundsen,” he said, sneering.

  Beret gave him a frosty look.

  “Criminologist, was that it?” He blocked her way into the room.

  “Please let me pass,” Beret said.

  “Please let me pass,” he mimicked. “I know who you are. You’re Lillie Brown’s sister. There’s no New York Institute for the Study of the Criminally Insane. And no Porter-Masters murders. I checked.”

  “How clever of you.”

  “Don’t take that tone with me, lady. Who do you think you are? You got a sister that’s a dead whore and an uncle that killed her. You can’t turn up your nose at me.”

  The other reporters heard the confrontation, and they grew quiet, staring at Beret, waiting for her to reply. Beret was furious. She had been in police stations before. She should have been prepared for the pack of newsmen, should have known they would be lying in wait. For a moment, she felt light-headed and a little sick to her stomach. But she drew herself up
and stared at the reporter. “Let me pass, sir,” she said, her voice steady, even if the rest of her was not.

  “That right?” a second reporter asked, taking a pencil from behind his ear and jotting down something on a pad of paper. “You really related to Judge Stanton?” The others drew closer.

  “You think he’s guilty?” another yelled.

  “Of course he’s guilty. He confessed, didn’t he?” someone said, then asked Beret, “How’d you know it was him?” A reporter demanded, “Were you scared? Did you think he’d kill you, too?” The others began yelling at Beret with so many questions that she covered her ears.

  The men crowded about Beret, and she felt overwhelmed. She was reminded of a bunch of rats fighting over a piece of meat—and she was that flesh. A reporter grabbed her and asked, “Why do you think he did it, lady?”

  Beret turned her head slowly, letting her eyes rest on the hand a moment. Then she raised her head and stared at the man so long that he removed his hand and took a step backward. But another immediately took his place and asked, “Your name Brown, or is it Stanton?”

  “It’s Staarman,” Latham said. “She’s married to that gambler at the Arcade, Teddy Star, the one that thinks he’s so swell.” He sent her a triumphant look, but Beret did not deign to glance at him. “Snooty one, isn’t she?” he asked. He stepped forward then, coming so close to Beret that she could smell the sweat on his clothes, and his breath, which was like stale whiskey.

  Another reporter put his hand on Beret’s back, and asked, “That right, you’re Mrs. Star?”

  Beret flinched, and for a few seconds, she closed her eyes. Then she opened them and searched the room again, but Mick was not to be seen. Instead, she spied a policeman in uniform sitting at a desk nearby, and she asked in a loud voice, “Officer, would you ask these men to unhand me?”

  The officer looked up and surveyed the crowd of half a dozen reporters. Then he stood and said, “Okay, boys, you’ve had your fun. Mind your manners now. Let the lady go.”

  Several of the reporters stepped back, but two still blocked Beret’s way, and the officer said again, “You let her go, I said. You want a knock on the noggin with my billy?” He put his hand on the club attached to his waist, and the men stepped away.

  “Thank you, Officer,” Beret said. She pushed through the reporters into the room, but as Mick still was not at his desk, Beret wasn’t sure where to go. She knew the newsmen were watching her, so she would not let herself lose face by turning and walking out of the building. Besides, once outside, she would be fair game. No one there would protect her from the reporters. So she headed toward Mick’s desk, determined to remain until the reporters gave up. Just as she reached the desk, she spotted Mick in the doorway talking to a man she knew was William Smith, the chief of police. He had nodded to her on Beret’s earlier visits to the station. The chief stared at her until Mick turned, recognized her, and motioned her forward.

  “This is Miss Osmundsen, Judge Stanton’s niece,” he said, although it was obvious the chief remembered her.

  He invited her into his office and offered her a chair, then dismissed Mick, but Beret said she would prefer that the detective stay.

  Chief Smith shrugged, and Mick closed the door, then leaned against it. “Your uncle has hired a solicitor who claims Detective McCauley arrested Judge Stanton without cause,” the chief began. He stopped and waited for Beret to respond, but she did not. “He says our detective here was so anxious for promotion that he made up a story about the judge confessing. This lawyer says it’s a pack of lies and that he can prove it.” Chief Smith glanced up at Mick, who said nothing, either. “He brought a sworn statement from Judge Mitchell Strong in which he claims he was playing billiards with Judge Stanton the afternoon Lillie Brown was murdered.”

  “He can’t back it up,” Mick interjected. “I checked. Judge Strong lives alone with only a manservant who comes and goes, and he wasn’t around that day. So nobody saw your uncle at Judge Strong’s house.”

  “Nevertheless, it’s a pretty good alibi,” Chief Smith said.

  “It is no alibi at all,” Beret said. “My uncle murdered my sister. He confessed it to me. In fact, he was so angry that I feared he would strike me. I did not know that Detective McCauley was listening in the foyer. Only his intervention saved me from harm.”

  The chief raised his eyes at Mick. “I didn’t know about that. Mick said you were in the room, but I thought you might change your mind about what you heard when you found out you might be asked to testify to it in court.”

  “You think I would not testify to the truth of what I heard?” Beret was incensed. “I am willing to do whatever is necessary to convict the man who killed my sister, even if that man is my uncle.”

  “If?” the chief asked.

  “If,” Beret replied.

  “But you said you heard the confession.”

  “Yes.”

  “Mick?” Chief Smith was confused.

  Mick studied Beret a moment. “Miss Osmundsen was convinced Jonas, the coachman, did not kill her sister, even though the evidence pointed that way, and it appears she was right. Are you saying now that despite what happened in the library yesterday, you don’t believe your uncle is guilty?”

  Beret thought about her aunt then, about how the woman had begged her to deflect suspicion from her uncle, and she hesitated.

  “Beret?” Mick asked, and the chief raised an eyebrow at the familiarity.

  “My aunt says he is not guilty,” she replied at last. “She believes he is covering up for Jonas.”

  “Then why would he confess?” Mick asked.

  “I don’t know. People do not always tell the truth when they confess. My aunt seems to believe that. She is not herself. She seems not to grasp what is going on, the seriousness of it.”

  Mick exchanged glances with the chief.

  Beret looked from one to the other. “What are you not telling me?”

  The chief nodded at Mick, who said, “Opium. The Stanton butler, William, frequents Hop Alley, and Jonas did before him. They may have bought it for your aunt.”

  “Opium?” Beret asked, frowning.

  “A drug made from poppies—” the chief started to explain.

  Beret waved away the words. “I know perfectly well what opium is. I…” She decided not to mention her confrontation in Hop Alley.

  “Ladies in Denver, even those of the highest social levels, have been known to visit the opium dens. I’m not saying Mrs. Stanton is guilty of that.” The chief’s voice trailed off as if waiting for Beret to interrupt again.

  “But my aunt? Surely not.” Beret felt it necessary to defend Varina, although she had begun to wonder if drugs might explain Varina’s failure to grasp reality.

  “Well, we are not investigating her. You had only asked…” Mick said lamely.

  Beret pulled herself together. “Is there any evidence, any at all, that my uncle did not murder my sister?”

  “None,” Mick and Chief Smith answered together.

  “Surely you don’t suspect him in the death of Sadie and the attack on the other girl.”

  “No, Jonas did those, although we don’t know why. We were trying to put it together just now,” Mick said.

  The two men looked at Beret, as if she could shed light on Jonas’s actions. “I believe Jonas must have known my uncle killed Lillie. Perhaps he drove him there, and being of a devious and unsound nature, he was inspired, if you will, to do a similar deed. He must have liked killing. There are men like that, you know.” She looked up at the chief. “Of course you know. You are a policeman. The act unleashed something in him, and he would have gone on killing if Detective McCauley had not stopped him.”

  “That’s pretty much what we thought,” Chief Smith told her. He stood, and Beret rose, too. “I’m thinking you might not have to testify, Miss Osmundsen. Your uncle’s guilt is so obvious that he might plead guilty if we would agree to spare his life. How would you feel about that?”
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br />   In all that had happened in the past day, Beret had not thought that her uncle might be hanged for killing Lillie. The idea sickened her. “I am against murder, whether by the hand of a fiend or that of the state,” she said.

  The chief nodded, then looked down at the papers on his desk by way of dismissal, and Beret left with Mick.

  “You believe, then, that the judge murdered your sister, and Jonas was responsible for the other two attacks?” Mick asked, a little uncertain.

  Beret took a long time to answer. “Yes.” Her voice was tentative.

  Mick stopped and looked at Beret, “You’re not sure.”

  Beret was hesitant. “Yes, I’m sure,” she said, then added, “Unless Jonas was responsible for all three attacks and my uncle is covering up for him in my sister’s death. But if that is the case, I can’t imagine why.” Then she added, “I intend to find out.”

  Chapter 23

  The rain had stopped overnight, but the day was oppressive, damp from all the moisture. The sky was overcast and dark, and Beret felt it weigh on her like a wet cloak as she walked to the trolley stop. Mick had offered to see her home, but it was clear that he was preoccupied. She’d assumed he was busy with details of her uncle’s confession, but then a newsman made a remark about the Arcade, and Beret realized Mick had made plans to go off with his fellows later to celebrate the arrest of one of Denver’s most prominent citizens. Mick would be a celebrity as long as the story of the Holladay Street murders was news, and that could be a very long time. Beret would not be asked to join the officers and reporters, of course, and she did not want to interfere with Mick’s plans by allowing him to escort her home. She had no claim on the detective. They were only acquaintances thrown together by the circumstances of her sister’s death, and now that that murder was solved, there was no reason for them to see each other. She was grateful to him not only for his help in solving Lillie’s murder but in protecting her from her uncle. That made her obligated to him, not the other way around.

  That idea depressed her even more. After a year alone, she had met a man who had intrigued her, had treated her as an intelligent woman, had made her laugh. And she thought he had liked her. But any hope she might have had that their relationship would go further was dashed. She could marry a second time, of course. There were always men who would marry a divorcée if her fortune were big enough, but Beret would rather live the life of a spinster than wed one of them. And that was the life she envisioned for herself now. Mick had been a pleasant acquaintance, but that was all.