“Yes?”
It was Matron Pratt herself, thinking, no doubt, that the police had returned.
“Good evening, Matron. I wonder if we could impose briefly upon Miss Montgomery.”
She started to snap a refusal, but then, to their surprise, she thought better of it and stepped back to admit them. Inside, in the dim light of the hall gas jets, they saw that her face, ordinarily so hostile and belligerent, was sunk into what looked like despair.
“In her room at the back,” she said dully, not meeting their eyes. Before they could say anything more, she had disappeared into the office.
Agatha Montgomery sat with two of the Bower’s girls. Side by side on the sofa, they were crying—loudly sobbing, their faces red and wet with tears. Across from them, Miss Montgomery sat with her hands folded in her lap. She was leaning toward them as if she had been speaking to them, but as Ames and MacKenzie knocked and entered, she looked up. Her expression was calm, her eyes clear.
“Miss Montgomery,” Ames began, “we do not mean to trouble you—”
“It is no trouble, Mr. Ames.” She inclined her head toward the two girls. “They were just leaving.” And when they did not move, she said in a sharper tone, “All right, girls. Go on, now.”
After they had gone, she sat back in her chair and closed her eyes. She was pale but composed. She looked like a woman of a certain age who had had a tiring day, but nothing more than that.
Ames cleared his throat. She opened her eyes and looked up at him. “Mr. Ames,” she said flatly.
“I wanted first to extend my sympathy—”
She stopped him with a wave of her hand. “Do you know where I went this afternoon? I went to the Women’s Industrial Union. They have invited us to join their sewing cooperative. We will be able to make some money, they tell me, and so we will not need to depend so heavily on charity. That should improve our fortunes, do you not think?” She smiled a small, bitter smile.
It seemed odd, thought MacKenzie, for her to be speaking of sewing cooperatives and charity, when the Bower had just suffered another hideous crime against one of its own. Perhaps she was still in such shock that she could not face the truth of what had happened.
Ames glanced at the doctor, quirked an eyebrow, and tried again.
“I am very sorry to trouble you at this time, but—” He seated himself on the sofa opposite her. MacKenzie cautiously took a chair nearer the door.
“But I understand the police have spoken to you just now,” Ames went on.
She came back from someplace far away. “Yes?”
He saw that she had not grasped what he’d said, and so he repeated it.
“Oh—the police,” she said. “Yes, I have seen them. Such a tiresome little man, isn’t he? That inspector, whatever his name is.”
“Crippen.”
She nodded vaguely.
Ames gritted his teeth. He desperately needed this woman’s help, but she seemed in no condition to give it.
“They have made an arrest, but I believe they have the wrong man. Or boy, rather.”
She frowned at him, puzzled, but she did not reply.
“Miss Montgomery, they have arrested Garrett O’Reilly for that girl’s death tonight. And I have no doubt that Crippen will find a way to charge him with the murders of Mary Flaherty and Bridget Brown as well.”
She shook her head, but she did not reply.
“Miss Montgomery? Are you listening?” Ames hunched forward on the sofa, fixing her in his dark gaze. For a moment, she struggled to come to grips with what he was saying; then, as her eyes met his, some spark of his own energy, his own determination, seemed to leap from him to her, and she snapped to.
“Yes, Mr. Ames. I am listening.” She folded her hands in her lap like a dutiful pupil.
“They have arrested the wrong person.”
“Yes, I believe they have,” she replied.
“You believe Garrett is innocent?” he asked sharply.
“Yes, I do.”
“Did you tell Inspector Crippen so?”
She faded again; she shook her head and began to twist her hands in her lap—that restless, obsessive habit of hers, profoundly unsettling to see.
“Did you?” Ames persisted.
“No.”
“But why not? It is very important that you, his employer, vouch for him to the police. They intend to convict him—and he is innocent, I am sure of it.”
She came back a little. “Yes,” she said, nodding. “I believe that too.”
“Well, then. You must say so—and as forcefully as you can. May I send word to Inspector Crippen that you will go down to police headquarters?”
“Oh, I couldn’t do that!”
He leaned toward her and seized her hands. She started and tried to pull away, but she could not.
“Miss Montgomery, listen to me. Yes—listen! A young man who is probably innocent has been arrested for the murder of three of the Bower’s girls. He is poor, illiterate, the sole support of his family. He will be put on trial for his life, and public sentiment being what it is, he will very likely be convicted. If he is convicted, he will very likely be hanged. You said just now that you do not believe he is guilty. Why? Why did you say that, Miss Montgomery? Do you have some suspicion about who is?”
She stared at him. Her mouth worked, but no words came. She blinked several times, as if she were trying to order her thoughts.
Then she began to laugh. It was a horrible sound, harsh and cackling, that made the hair rise on the back of Ames’s neck.
He had let go of her hands, and now he rose and stood over her. He glanced at MacKenzie, hoping perhaps for some helpful word. “Doctor—?” he began, but before he could say more, the door flew open and Matron Pratt rushed in.
“There!” she snapped at Ames with some of her former vituperousness. “You see what you’ve done!”
She bent over Miss Montgomery, put her arms around her, and tenderly embraced her. “There,” she said again, but softly now, almost singing, in the tone used to soothe a troubled child.
Miss Montgomery went on laughing for a moment, but then her laughter changed to deep, wrenching sobs that from someone else would have been heartbreaking. From this woman, MacKenzie thought, they were faintly revolting.
But he was amazed at Matron Pratt, who apparently had some human feeling after all. He found that notion oddly reassuring.
Suddenly Matron Pratt reverted to form. Still shielding Miss Montgomery with one arm, she straightened and half turned to the two men. “Go away!” she snapped. “She’s in no condition to speak to you!”
Since this was so obviously true, they left. As MacKenzie glanced back, he saw that Matron Pratt had both arms around Miss Montgomery and was bending over her, embracing her, crooning softly to her. He shook his head. Amazing, to see such tenderness from that dragon.
It had begun to rain again. As they went down the steps, the uniformed patrolman was just passing; he nodded to them and touched the brim of his helmet.
“All quiet, Officer?” Ames asked.
“Yes, sir.”
They watched him as he walked on. The square was dark, deserted.
“Come along, Doctor,” Ames said. “We’ve work to do.”
“There he is,” muttered Ames. “on Martin Sweeney’s personal assurance, he’s the best cracksman in the business.”
They had come to a corner a few blocks from the Bower. Briefly, MacKenzie had been disoriented, but now, as he peered through the darkness and rain, across the stretch of wet, glistening cobblestones, he saw that they stood across the street from the Reverend Montgomery’s rectory.
“He” was a short, stubby man in a tweed cap and shapeless jacket. He stood a little away from the streetlamp, so that they could not see his face clearly, but obviously he recognized Ames, for he approached them now as they crossed. MacKenzie noted that he carried a dark lantern, unlit. Without a word of greeting he put out his hand, and Ames shook it briefly.
Then Ames led the way to an alley halfway down the block, and they went along the high wooden fence until they came to the gate behind the church property. Ames pushed it open. They were in a small garden whose stone benches and lone marble statue were evidence that someone—the Reverend Montgomery? some of his female parishioners?—cared for it more than for the bleak, inhospitable rectory itself.
In a moment more they were at the rectory’s basement door. MacKenzie waited, holding the dark lantern, while Ames went down the small flight of stone steps with their companion. After a moment, there was the sound of metal scraping on metal. To MacKenzie’s ears, acutely attuned to the danger of their situation, it sounded very loud. Hurry, he thought, or Garrett O’Reilly will not be the only one arrested this night.
After what seemed an endless time but was probably no more than thirty seconds or so, Sweeney’s cracksman gave a small grunt of satisfaction, and MacKenzie heard the door creak open.
There was a moment’s pause during which Ames, after a muttered word or two, slipped a folded banknote to their silent companion. Then the cracksman, without a word, came up the steps, slipped past MacKenzie, and disappeared through the gate, carefully and silently closing it behind him.
“Well, Doctor,” said Ames quietly, “shall we proceed?”
As well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, MacKenzie thought as he slipped into the darkened rectory.
“Here,” muttered Ames. “Hold the lantern.” He struck a match, and the lantern’s dim light blossomed in the gloom.
They were in a back passageway. Doors led off it, all closed. Ames tried one and then another until he found the way to the rectory’s kitchen. “Come,” he said softly—although why he troubled to lower his voice, MacKenzie did not know. Either they were alone in the house, in which case Ames could speak in a normal tone, or they were not, in which case they would inevitably be discovered.
MacKenzie held the lantern high while Ames prowled the room. He stopped by a large butcher’s block, above which hung a rack of knives. He pulled them out one by one, examined them closely, and then, shrugging, moved on. He opened a cabinet door and peered at its contents: bottles and jars of various sizes, some labeled—SODA, CINNAMON, SALT—some not.
“The reverend suffers from toothache apparently,” Ames murmured, turning away. Glancing in, MacKenzie saw a bottle labeled CHLOROFORM. It was not significant; half the households in America had chloroform on hand.
With a final glance around the shadowy room, Ames motioned for MacKenzie to follow him out into the passageway once more and up a flight of stairs that led to the first-floor hall.
“Now,” said Ames. “Just bring the lantern over here, Doctor, if you will.” He stepped to a place by the wall, toward the front door, and, crouching, struck a match. Holding it close to the wall, he peered intently at the heavy, dark, leathery paper. When the match had burned down to his fingers, he dropped it into his pocket and lit another, and then another.
“What is it?” asked MacKenzie. His knee was hurting, and although the rectory was nearly as cold as the streets, sweat trickled uncomfortably down his face and neck.
“Or what is it not?” Ames replied. “Set the lantern down, Doctor, and—here—light matches for me.”
Ames was on his hands and knees now, his face only a few inches from the red-and-black tile floor where it met the wall.
After MacKenzie had lighted four matches, Ames got to his feet.
“Enough,” he said. Taking back the matchbox and picking up the lantern, he led the way upstairs. As MacKenzie followed, his feeling of unease grew with every step, until by the time they had reached the second-floor hall, he was as nervous as a cat in a dog pound. Ames must have believed that they had enough time to make their break-and-entry exploration, or he would not have attempted it; nevertheless, MacKenzie liked to think of himself as a law-abiding man, and this exercise unnerved him. Well-connected though Ames might be to the police and the other power centers of the city, MacKenzie knew that their presence here, if it were discovered, would not be looked upon as anything but criminal.
Ames opened the door to the front bedroom. Like every other room they’d seen in the rectory, this was a bare, dreary chamber with little attempt at adornment or decoration. A sagging bed in an iron bed-frame stood against one wall, a tall chiffonier against another. The blinds and curtains at the front windows were drawn shut, but a dim light from the streetlamp outside shone around the edges.
Handing the lantern to the doctor, Ames went to a door and opened it: the reverend’s clothes closet. Rapidly he rummaged among the frock coats and trousers hanging there; after a moment, he turned away. He opened the drawers of the chiffonier, riffled through the contents, and shut them. Nothing.
In the hall once more, Ames turned toward the rear, where, opening a door, he saw not a closet but a flight of stairs leading up.
“Now we may find something of interest,” he said, starting up ahead of MacKenzie. The steps were narrow and high-risered; once, MacKenzie stumbled and nearly dropped the lantern.
At the top was a door—locked. There was no landing, so MacKenzie waited behind on the stairs while Ames took from his trouser pocket a small ring of skeleton keys.
“Fortunately I persuaded Sweeney’s man to lend these to me for the night,” he said. “Now the question is, can I get one of them to work?”
Carefully he inserted one key into the lock, fiddled with it with no success, took it out and tried another, and another. At last, with a small exclamation of triumph, he turned the lock, turned the knob, and pushed open the door.
They were in a large room, richly furnished—how richly they could not at first discern in the dim light of the dark lantern. After making sure that no light would show from the heavily curtained windows, Ames turned the gas jets on the wall sconces by the fireplace, and with the turning rod illuminated the large chandelier in the center of the room.
MacKenzie caught his breath. Richly furnished indeed—an exquisite Turkish carpet woven in shades of red and topaz and indigo; velvet and brocade furniture in the latest, most ornate styles, including a fringed ottoman and a sofa with a high, carved rosewood back; marble-topped ebony tables; lamps with multicolored glass shades in the fashionable Tiffany style.
A tiled fireplace took up much of the wall opposite the windows, while on the other two hung a number of paintings framed in heavy carved and gilded wood. A large table in the center of the room held several books bound in fine tooled leather.
Ames, muttering under his breath, had been prowling the room, but now he stopped before a table on which was propped a small painting.
“Look at this!” he exclaimed.
MacKenzie looked. It was an antique-looking scene of dainty, half-clad maidens cavorting in a misty wood.
“What is it?” he said.
“The Watteau,” Ames replied. “Do you remember, just—what was it?—three nights ago, when Caroline had her dinner party for that rapscallion Englishman? He spoke of an art auction in New York. He was beat out by a Boston man, he said, whose name he never learned. I could give it to him now, sure enough. There hasn’t been time to find a place to hang it, I assume.”
Ames moved to a bookshelf beside the fireplace. “Doctor, look here.” He pulled out a large volume and carried it to the center table. “This is the Bower’s account book for the last year. I have seen its twin at the Bower’s office.”
He opened it and began rapidly to scan its closely written pages. “Yes—here—and, yes—why, the man has no shame. None at all.”
MacKenzie stepped to his side. He saw columns of names with sums of money entered next to them. Quite large sums of money, and many names.
“Look at the last month of the year,” Ames said. “For December—the total receipts are listed as—ah—one thousand four hundred and seventy-five dollars. But I distinctly remember that in the account book at the Bower, the receipts for December were only three hundred and something. And the expenditure column
in that book matched the receipts exactly, whereas here, there are no expenditures listed at all. Only the intake.”
“One wonders why the man bothered to record it,” MacKenzie said.
“This,” said Ames, stabbing at the page with his forefinger, “this is the real amount that the reverend has brought in for the Bower. The one at the office is false. And it is from these sums—these moneys given by the good people of Boston—that the reverend affords all this.” His angry gaze swept around the room. “The man is a thief for certain. And far worse than that, if I am not mistaken,” he added grimly.
He returned the account book to its place and moved to a small rolltop desk. Pushing up the slatted lid, he plucked from among the littered papers there a small manual.
“If I am not mistaken, the reverend used this to compose his coded notes to Mary Flaherty. I wonder if he might have a sample.”
He rummaged among the papers—bills from Brooks Brothers, from Locke-Ober’s restaurant, from a wine merchant in Brookline—without success. No matter. The manual was evidence enough.
“I wonder—” he began, but MacKenzie never learned what Ames planned to say next, for at that moment they heard, from below, the sound of the front door slamming. The reverberation carried up through the house.
For a fraction of a second their eyes met. Then Ames darted to the gas jets, turned down the lights by the mantel, and reached with the rod to extinguish the chandelier.
In the near darkness, illuminated only by the dark lantern, they listened. They heard a heavy footfall—surely the reverend’s—upon the stairs leading to the second floor.
MacKenzie’s heart hammered painfully in his chest, and his mouth was dry. They were caught in a trap of their own making, and if Ames could not bluff their way out—but what possible excuse could he give for their being here, having broken into the place, in stealth, by night, if not to burgle then at the very least to pry?
The reverend’s footsteps had not stopped at the second floor. Now they were on the stairs leading to this room, and now MacKenzie could hear the reverend’s voice, and the soft sound of laughter—female laughter—in reply.
MURDER AT BERTRAM'S BOWER Page 26