by KB Inglee
When Emily returned to the shop, the clerk had recovered enough to answer questions for the patrolman. Neither the clerk nor the customers could give a good description of the robber.
“Perhaps I can be of some help, Patrolman Henley,” said Emily, recognizing the patrolman. “I was here, and I’m not a bad witness.”
“Oh, Mrs. Lawrence, were you, now.” He seemed relieved. “Seems The Duke is up to his old tricks.”
“Was that The Duke?” asked the clerk in awe.
“So it would seem,” said Emily. “He fits the description, what there was of it, that I’ve read in the papers.”
Every newspaper report had mentioned his small size, soft voice, and fine manners. One of the shop girls he had robbed compared his manners favorably to those of the previous customer, who, with an air of entitlement, had referred to himself as the Earl of Duxbury.
“If he was an Earl, then the robber must be a Duke,” she had said. The name stuck.
Emily gave a brief description of the man and of the events, then added, “I am going back to the office if you need more from me.”
She handed the patrolman a business card for Lawrence Research and dropped a second on the counter for the clerk.
* * * *
As she pulled the office door shut behind her Emily asked, “Is Mr. Lawrence in? I have just had an encounter with The Duke.” Emily went to her desk under the windows facing the street in the work room.
Mrs. Briggs followed her. “No, he will be back in half-an-hour or so. Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Coffee first. I will be all right.” Emily’s hands began shaking once she was seated at her desk. “Give me a minute and then get me the newspaper file. Maybe we can learn something.”
Mrs. Briggs poured her employer a cup of coffee, then went to the file cabinet. “You weren’t out buying another pair of gloves, were you?”
Emily lowered her eyes and chewed on her lower lip. The Lawrences had been in Washington for nearly four years, and finally there was enough money for more than essentials. All of Emily’s clothes had been mended and re-mended. Her first extravagance had been to burn her much mended gloves and replace them with a good cotton pair. Since then she had purchased four other pair, each more expensive than the last. The spending spree was unlike her. What was she doing? The pair she had been looking at this afternoon was lilac kid and very expensive.
“Mrs. Lawrence, have you considered a new hat if you must be so extravagant? I mean a new one, not just another redressing of the old one.” She glanced down at Emily’s feet. “Or new shoes.”
“You are right, I have been far too wasteful. The cobbler bars his door when he sees me coming,” said Emily. She pulled the well-worn and much-mended shoe back under the hem of her skirt. “Buying hats and shoes has always felt like a necessity, but gloves were a luxury. I have been pampering myself.”
Mrs. Briggs gave her a wry look as she set the file in front of Emily. “I thought the file would be much thicker than this,” she said. “Seems this has been going on for a while, and one hears all kinds of rumors.”
“Thank you. Yes, it does seem thin.” Emily wrote down her recollections of the afternoon in as much detail as she could. After she signed and dated the paper, she handed it to Mrs. Briggs to witness the signature.
Emily took a pad of paper out of her desk and began noting similarities among the robberies. Within half an hour she had filled several sheets.
“What are you working at so diligently?” asked Charles.
“Oh! Charles, you’re back. Look at this, will you?”
He pulled a chair over to her desk.
“Glove shop? You were buying more gloves? Emily….”
Emily sighed. “No more gloves, I promise. It has been a foolish extravagance. This time I was trying on a pair when The Duke came for his monthly spending money.”
“Monthly?”
Charles took Emily’s hand and ran his thumb over the back. Thought she delighted in the touch, she slapped his hand away. They had long ago agreed that there would be no displays of affection in the office.
“Since September of ’74 he has held up one store each month except during the summer. At least that’s what the newspapers report. And look at this: each time the total has been less than $50. Hardly enough to live on. Robbers aren’t usually so frugal.”
“Are these the names of the shops?” asked Charles.
“Yes. Small shops selling women’s goods, corsets, gloves, hats. All the witnesses are women, even to the store clerks. What do you think the chances of that would be?”
“So,” said Charles, carefully examining her notes, “our man has been at this for a little over a year, gaining a small monthly income. He is excessively polite because he is dealing only with women. He must check each shop carefully before he enters.” Charles paused thoughtfully. “Did you get a good look at him?”
“Not really.” She described the bandit, adding, “His voice was high pitched, though he sounded as though he was trying to disguise it. Maybe the clerk would have recognized it. He spoke only as necessary, but with extreme courtesy. I thought he was a customer until I saw the gun.”
“Emily, could you tell what kind of gun?”
“No, his hand covered all but the barrel. It was short and blue-black in color, with some fancy scroll work near the tip. He got thirty seven dollars and eighty four cents.”
“It’s not a lot of money, but not bad for ten minutes work. When we first moved to Washington, we lived on considerably less than fifty dollars a month,” Charles said with a chuckle.
“Shouldn’t he be getting greedy and looking at bigger and better things? Isn’t it odd that he keeps going after small shops? And only once a month.”
Charles laughed again. “Maybe he just doesn’t have expensive tastes.”
“Here is something else, Charles; every one of the robberies has been on a Tuesday afternoon.”
Emily went to the map of Washington on the wall and put map pins in the locations of the robberies. They described a triangle with Pennsylvania Avenue, D Street, and Seventh Street as its sides. There had been no robberies on Ninth Street, though there were similar shops there.
“Charles, the thief ran into this alley. Each shop is near a similar alley. The thief comes out to Ninth Street, and blends in with the crowd. Then he simply walks away.”
“That’s a good theory, but wouldn’t the police have figured all this out and be ready the next time? They seem to have pretty consistent descriptions of the man. They matched your observations to a T. Who interviewed you in the store?”
“Patrolman Henley. Maybe we could talk to someone who is working on the case.”
They hardly had to wait.
There was a knock at the door. Mrs. Briggs went to answer it.
“Mrs. Lawrence, this police detective is here to ask you about the robbery this afternoon,” said Mrs. Briggs as she showed the young man into the work room. Charles brought another chair over to Emily’s desk and indicated that the detective should sit.
“Detective Glazier, ma’am,” he said. Picking up one of the newspaper articles on her desk he asked, “What’s all this? This is a police case, Mrs. Lawrence, not for a private detective to be looking into.”
Emily smiled, “In this case I am not a private detective, but the witness to a crime who just happens to have an insatiable curiosity. I assume you have reached the same conclusions we have?”
Emily listed the conditions as she had told them to Charles.
“Pretty much,” was his non-committal answer.
“So you have filled Ninth Street between Pennsylvania and D on Tuesday afternoons with policemen and you have not seen anyone fitting that description coming out of any of the alleys?”
“Yeah.”
Detective Glazier tugged on his coll
ar. Emily suppressed a smile at the sight of his discomfort at being questioned by the witness. He did not seem very skilled at turning the situation around.
He squared his shoulders and cleared his throat. “Tell me what you saw, Mrs. Lawrence.”
Emily told her story again and then handed him the paper on which she had written her statement. “Will this help? I thought I ought to write it down as soon as I got back here, before I forgot any of it.”
When Detective Glazier was finally back on the street, Emily turned to Charles and asked, “Why do you suppose they have assigned such an inexperienced person to the case?”
“Any criminal who nets less than $400 a year and never hurts anyone has to be pretty low on the list. Glazier probably has someone looking over his shoulder and making suggestions.”
* * * *
The first Tuesday in December was cold and overcast. After lunch, Emily took a pistol out of the gun cabinet, checked and loaded it, slipping it and a hand-full of cartridges into her coat pockets.
“Charles, I am going to buy a pair of gloves.”
“Not by yourself, you’re not.” He followed her out into the hall.
“If you must come, then at least stay away from me. Follow me and watch, but remember, only women are involved here. If he sees you, he will probably not attempt anything. He seems to feel safe with women. If you want you can watch the stores and I can prowl the area watching for him. You should also tell the police we are there.”
After that, Emily was not aware of Charles’s presence as she went from store to store. She watched the mouths of the two alleys that opened into the street. There was more foot traffic than one would expect on such a chilly day.
Emily did not much like shopping, but she had fun playing at it. She kept an eye on the street as she tried on hats, discussed the qualities of worsted wool, or picked out neckties for Charles. At the end of the first half hour she had identified all the policemen keeping watch, but still had not seen Charles.
About two forty-five, the movement in the street changed its rhythm and she put down the hat she was looking at and went out into the throng. The men she had identified as police were congregating at the ends of the alleys, leaning against walls or appearing to read newspapers. A man in a long dark coat came out onto Ninth Street from the short cut to Pennsylvania Avenue. They were on him at once. Emily watched as they hustled him into a police wagon and drove rapidly away.
He was the wrong man; he was too tall and too broad. His coat was old and the bulge in the pocket looked more like it was made by a bottle than a gun.
The gawkers went back to their activities, the women back into the shops and the men about their business. Emily stood still, watching the alleys. A well-dressed mother dragging a reluctant daughter behind her came out of the alley and headed for a corset shop, several little boys ran smack into a gentleman who was strolling along Ninth Street. As Emily was about to give up and go back to the office, a tall, fashionably dressed woman come out of the alley and hailed a cab, giving an address in a deep but pleasant voice. She wore a long cape that came nearly to the ground. She held a carpet bag in one hand and a purse in the other.
Turning, Emily saw Charles waiting for her at the corner.
“We are going in here,” she said, pushing him into a pastry shop. “Get me coffee, and don’t ask me any questions for a minute or two.”
She found herself a table, drew out the sketch book and pencils she always carried with her. Biting her lip, she began a sketch of the woman she had seen. Charles brought the coffee and sat quietly waiting for her to finish.
“Here,” she said, tearing the sheet out of the notebook. “And this is the address she gave the cab driver.”
Charles stared at her. “You expect me to take this to the police and explain to them in a reasonable manner that the armed bandit is a woman? Have you ever heard of a woman holding up a store with a gun? How do you even know there was a robbery? It was a hat shop, by the way.”
Emily shrugged and smiled. “‘There is more in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than is dreamt of in your philosophies.’ The man they arrested isn’t The Duke. He doesn’t even fit the description.”
“But a woman?” protested Charles.
Emily sipped her coffee thoughtfully. “I could commit such robberies, Charles. I wouldn’t because it is not right. But what if I had no money and no way to earn any? The things I have learned working with you would prepare me to be a very good armed robber.”
Charles stared at her. At length he dropped a dime on the table.
“I believe you could,” he said, and picking up the sketch, he left her sitting there.
* * * *
Just before lunch the next day, Detective Glazier came into the office, chin high, chest out. He walked up to Charles.
“Mr. Lawrence, I don’t know why, but my supervisor is insisting that I interview this Mrs. Fulton, the woman in your wife’s sketch.”
Emily hid her smile behind her hand. So Detective Glazier was not going to admit that Emily even existed. This should be interesting.
Glazier continued speaking to Charles and ignoring Emily. “I thought that I should take you with me to the interview.”
Charles glanced at Emily, not even bothering to hide his glee. “You mean you wish to take Mrs. Lawrence with you, don’t you?”
Detective Glazier looked confused for a minute. “Well…” he began.
“I’d be happy to go with you,” she said, standing up and taking his arm. “Would you like to pretend you are Mr. Lawrence and we are simply making a call? This must be very embarrassing for you, interviewing a woman as though she were a suspect.”
Glazier glared at her. “She cannot possibly have done such a thing. Everyone seems satisfied that we got the right man. This request has come out of the blue and from very high up. I’ll be a laughing stock if I do this. If anything goes wrong, I’d be putting my neck in a noose.”
Emily glanced at Charles, who admitted, “I took your sketch to Captain Hobbs. It isn’t his detail, but I knew he would put stock in anything you said. Well, some anyway.”
In the end the three of them decided that Emily and Charles would go alone to call on Mrs. Futon. Glazier would wait in the cab for their report.
* * * *
The Fulton house had once been a fine, if modest, home on a quiet street. It was sorely in need of a coat of paint and some repairs to the fence. It was neatly kept, as though money, not caring, was the problem.
The maid showed them in and Mrs. Fulton met them in the spotless parlor. She greeted them cordially.
“I was in a glove shop about a month ago,” began Emily gently. “I was trying on a pair of lovely gloves when I happened to glance at the customer next to me, who was holding a gun.”
Mrs. Fulton smiled and said, “What has that to do with me? I haven’t had a new pair of gloves for well over a year.”
Emily continued. “Yesterday a hat shop on Pennsylvania Avenue was held up by the person the newspapers are calling The Duke.”
“Yes, I read about it in the morning paper. I ask you again, why are you telling this to me?”
“Where is your husband, Mrs. Fulton?” asked Charles.
“He is out of town. He goes to Baltimore the first Tuesday of each month. His mother is ill and he goes to see her.” Mrs. Fulton did not seem to think it strange that two people she had never met would call on her and ask such questions. She answered freely but thoughtfully.
“What is his line of work?” Charles continued.
“He sells machinery for Furness and Wesson.”
“Oh,” said Emily, “and being unable to sell anything, even if it is only one day a week, has cut into his income.”
“We are hardly impoverished.”
“But fifty dollars or so each month would help stretch the tight finances,” said
Emily.
Mrs. Fulton burst out laughing. “Indeed it would. Just enough to make ends meet, no more.”
Charles and Emily said nothing. People often said more than they intended in order to fill the silence.
Mrs. Fulton stepped into their trap. “The Duke hasn’t been greedy or hurt anyone. He has kept his activities minor compared to some of the robberies I read about in the paper. Surely you don’t think I am The Duke. Why would you suspect that a woman would take part in such activities? Are you the police?” Mrs. Fulton was still perfectly at her ease, more amused that frightened.
“No,” said Emily. “I just happen to have been in the glove shop when you robbed it, and I admire accomplished women.” She went on to explain how she had come to associate Mrs. Fulton with The Duke.
“And do you expect anyone to believe you if you accuse me of being The Duke?”
“That will be the difficult part. My husband didn’t believe me at first, and he had a difficult time convincing the police to question you.”
“But the police haven’t questioned me. If they do, I will deny it. I hardly think they will press the point. They aren’t going to find any stolen goods about the house. The Duke steals only money.”
“We will state the facts as we know them,” said Emily. “What they do is up to them.”
“What are the facts as you know them, Mrs. Lawrence? How much of what you know is surmise? You cannot prove that it was I in that store. Everyone saw a man, and will say so in court.” Mrs. Fulton turned slightly, displaying a view of her ample train draped over a most fashionable bustle. “If you saw me getting in the cab, as you say you did, then you will know…”
Emily remembered that fullness under the voluminous cloak. Mrs. Fulton raised an eyebrow and smiled complacently.
Emily paused for a bit before going on. “Oh, it is mostly surmise, as you say. Before I married, bustles were just coming in. My father did not think them appropriate for women of our class. I made up a contraption of wire and rattan that I could wear under my cape. I never left the house in it,” she added, glancing at Charles, who seemed mildly surprised.