The Case Book of Emily Lawrence

by KB Inglee

  “Writing, at least that kind of book. He said he liked teaching, and that each book was worse than the one before it. This book was to pay off some debt he had incurred, then he was done. He didn’t find it enjoyable anymore. Oliver offered him more money, but he thought he would give it up anyway. The publisher may have threatened a lawsuit.”

  “That would be grounds for him to kill the publisher, not the other way around. But it would account for the lawyer.”

  Cox shrugged. “Maybe they argued and it got out of hand. Still, neither of them are violent men.”

  “You mentioned a woman. Do you know who she is?”

  “I never met her. Mrs. Franklin, I believe her name is. A pleasant woman, according to Gooding, very fond of cats and knitting.”

  “Do you know his publisher?”

  “Certainly. He’s taken a couple of my critical articles as book chapters. Doesn’t seem like the sort who would kill off his authors.”

  * * * *

  Emily was standing by the window in Mrs. Stevens’s sitting room watching the snow make halos around the street lamps, when the doorbell rang.

  “Who would come calling on an evening like this?” asked Mrs. Stevens as she rose from the overstuffed yellow sofa.

  A few murmured sounds from the hall and Mrs. Stevens returned. “It’s a Mrs. Franklin to see you, dear. I put her in the parlor.”

  Mrs. Franklin, several inches taller than Emily, was the kind of woman who grew more striking with age. Dark curls showed beneath her feathered hat, and her gown was forest green and black, trimmed with jet beads. She turned as Emily came through the door.

  “You must help me, Mrs. Lawrence.”

  Emily nodded. In the years she had been a detective, how many hundreds of conversations had begun with those words?

  Mrs. Franklin sat in the chair Emily indicated and opened the bag she carried with her. She pulled out a cloud of salmon lace on a pair of long, thin knitting needles. As soon as she picked up the needles and started work, her whole body settled into stillness, as though all her energy moved through her fingers and into the project in her lap.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “The police think I killed Mr. Gooding.”

  “Did you?” asked Emily.

  “No, of course not! But I have to go to police headquarters to talk to Captain Bates in the morning. Mr. Fleet said you were there at the hotel this morning. I thought you could help.”

  “You were at his hotel last night?”

  Mrs. Franklin remained silent, staring at the work in her lap.

  “If you don’t tell me the truth, I can’t help you,” Emily said as gently as she could.

  “Yes. I arrived about ten in the evening and left about one or two. Mr. Gooding found me a cab, so he was alive when I left.”

  “How long have you known Mr. Gooding?”

  “Well over ten years. We met when he sold his first book and came to Boston.”

  “How did you meet?”

  “His publisher, Mr. Oliver, introduced us.”

  Emily would have to ask Cox if publishers often provided such comforts for out-of-town authors. He had long since become accustomed to her asking such shocking questions. Did Mrs. Franklin offer to warm others on cold Boston nights?

  Mrs. Franklin went on. “Do you know he had decided to stop writing his books? I told him how wonderful they were. If he didn’t come to Boston to meet Mr. Oliver, I would never see him.”

  “Is it true there had been a scandal when it came out he wrote as Zachary Garner?”

  “That college of his is just a bunch of snobs. What’s wrong with his books? They are exciting and romantic. I loved every one of them.”

  “I must admit, I’ve read one or two myself,” said Emily.

  “Mr. Oliver was very upset with his decision and threatened to take him to court, you know. He hired his own lawyer. An expensive one from Back Bay. Perhaps Mr. Oliver saved them both great expense by killing poor Mr. Gooding.”

  Emily raised one brow. Being dead didn’t seem like a good way to save money.

  “Why would Mr. Oliver want to kill someone who made so much money for him?”

  Mrs. Franklin laughed. “If there were to be no more books, think how well this one would sell if the author had just been murdered.”

  Emily took a chance. “Someone suggested he owed you money. Is that the case?”

  “Why, yes. How odd that anyone should even know that. Teachers don’t make much money and he spent a week in Boston last summer working on his latest book. Didn’t have a penny in his pocket and he likes to stay in nice hotels. I had a bit extra at the time, so I paid for his room at the Parker House as well as his meals. It came to a tidy sum. He was paying me back a little at a time.” She paused. “Maybe Mr. Oliver will reimburse me for what is left.”

  Mrs. Franklin had not stopped knitting throughout the conversation. Her fingers flew and she never once glanced at the work. Emily suppressed a smile as she pictured a naked Mrs. Franklin knitting in bed with her lover asleep at her side.

  “What a lovely color,” Emily commented, touching the fine soft wool. Her stitches were even and regular.

  “Knitting calms the soul, and is useful as well,” said Mrs. Franklin. She finished the row and opened her bag.

  Emily glanced into the bag. There was the usual jumble of knitting implements, all far more elegant than anything Emily had in her knitting basket. Ivory tapestry needles, steel stitch holders, fine wooden cable needles, four sets of needles, one of bone, two of tight-grained wood, and one of steel, all slim and glossy, and an embroidery tool with a carved ivory handle. The porous surface of the ivory was darkened by years of constant use. Mrs. Franklin slipped the shawl carefully into the bag.

  “Mrs. Franklin, I don’t think there is anything I can do for you. I don’t work with open police investigations. You can trust Captain Bates to sort it all out properly, but I suggest you tell the truth. If you didn’t kill Mr. Gooding, you are perfectly safe.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “Let me call you a cab,” Emily offered.

  “That’s very kind of you, but Billy is waiting for me.”

  Emily stood on the porch as Mrs. Franklin approached the waiting Rockaway. Before she stepped into the cab, Mrs. Franklin spoke to the driver. “Billy, I’d like to go home now.”

  Emily studied the cab thoughtfully. If you were to discreetly spend nights in hotels with visitors, you would need a horse and driver at your beck and call. The horse was a small chestnut with an odd white spot shaped like a duck on his belly, just behind the surcingle.

  Emily watched until they turned the corner onto Broadway and then went back inside. “I will have to send Professor Cox to talk to Mr. Oliver,” she said to herself as she climbed the stairs to the second floor and knocked on Patrick Sullivan’s door.

  “Come in.” Patrick Sullivan sat at the desk with his freckled nose in an open book. Light from the electric lamp turned his hair into a copper halo. She would miss him when he graduated in the spring. He helped her with cases from time to time, but more than that, they were friends.

  “It’s about Professor Cox, isn’t it? What can I do to help?” he asked.

  “Cabs,” said Emily. “Could you ask your brother to find the cabs Mrs. Franklin and Mr. Oliver took to and from the hotel? Professor Cox took the trolley, so that’s no help.” She described Billy and the horse with the duck mark.

  “Joseph doesn’t have a horse like that, but he’ll know who to ask. Too bad we don’t have a telephone here. I can use a friend’s, but it’s not a particularly nice night to be out.”

  * * * *

  “So, you are working now?” asked Dr. Bryers as Emily heaped her plate with bacon and eggs. She usually ate lightly, but her appetite increased substantially when she took on a case.

&nb
sp; “Not exactly.”

  “She’s trying to keep me from being charged with murder,” admitted Cox, whose appetite had not suffered. “Seems the police think a literary discussion is grounds for murder.”

  Everyone turned to stare at Professor Cox. Of the six people at the breakfast table, only Mrs. Stevens was less likely to be arrested for murder. Still, Emily had met kind, thoughtful people who were also murderers.

  “I have the information you asked for last evening, Mrs. Lawrence.” Patrick handed her a folded piece of paper.

  “Good lad,” said Cox.

  At that moment the doorbell rang. Mary set the serving dish she was carrying on the sideboard and went to answer the door. She was back in a minute and handed Emily a card.

  “I told him you could see him after breakfast, Mrs. Emily, but he insisted.”

  “I’ll see him now. I might as well get it over with.” She tossed Mr. Fleet’s card into the middle of the table for the others to see and went to greet him.

  Mr. Fleet wore the same grin he had when she ran into him on School Street, but today his trousers were more subdued.

  She held the parlor door open for him and closed it behind them. She neither offered him a seat nor took one herself.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Fleet?”

  “The weapon used to stab Gooding was at least three inches long, round, and very thin.”

  “Like an ice pick?” she asked.

  He walked over to her knitting basket and drew a steel knitting needle out her current project, white wool gloves.

  “Please don’t ravel my work, Mr. Fleet.”

  She had spent an hour or so early in her career trying to turn a knitting needle into a murder weapon, to prove it could be done. It was possible with some modification to the needle and if you knew where and how to use it. It was certainly not a weapon of opportunity. Mrs. Franklin’s wooden needles would have broken and the thin steel ones would have bent before penetrating the skin.

  “A woman? The police suspect a woman?” Emily asked.

  “Actually they think it’s the publisher who found the body. I understand Professor Cox argued with the victim that night in his hotel room. Then you show up at the hotel next morning. What’s the connection?”

  Emily thought a bit before answering. She didn’t trust Mr. Fleet not to publish her statements.

  “It would seem that Professor Cox and Mr. Gooding were friends. The professor had a drink with him in his room. He asked me at breakfast if I would be willing to pay a call on Mr. Gooding at ten that morning. I assumed Mr. Gooding needed a detective for some reason. It would be most unlike Professor Cox to send me all the way to Boston in that miserable snow simply to get a book inscribed.”

  “You don’t know why Gooding wanted to see you?”

  She shook her head. “Neither does Professor Cox. You can be sure I asked him. That’s all I know.”

  She remembered the paper Patrick had given her. “Have you looked into the cabs that took his visitors to and from the hotel? Have you interviewed Mr. Oliver?”

  “Can’t get to Oliver. He is holed up in his Back Bay mansion. Only his lawyer and the police are allowed in. I thought maybe you and Cox could see him.”

  “I am deeply offended, Mr. Fleet. Do you think I would take on a case to get information for a newspaper? If that were my intention, I would have become a reporter, not a detective.”

  “No, but you would take a case to get your friend off the hook.”

  “Professor Cox is not a suspect.”

  Fleet was silent for a bit. When he spoke, his voice was softer, with none of the bluster she had come to expect from him. Had he perhaps become aware of his own mortality?

  “Mrs. Lawrence, you and I saw them take Mr. Gooding’s body out of the hotel. I can still see the red stone in the ring bobbing up and down as they carried the stretcher to the van.”

  “Why Mr. Fleet, do I detect a touch of humanity under your reporter’s swagger?”

  He shrugged. “Let me know if you find anything.”

  She didn’t answer.

  Mr. Fleet handed her the needle he had favored as a murder weapon. She lifted out the gloves she had been knitting and began picking up the stitches. If he had damaged it she wanted him to know. Her own knitting implements were shabby in comparison to those she had seen last night. She picked up the cheap tin tool she used to put holes in fabric and pick up dropped stitches. It had a sharp point that could be inserted between the threads of a piece of fabric to force them apart without breaking them. The shaft was three inches long and broadened gradually to almost half an inch across. The handle was an ornate filigree of stamped tin. It was far less used than the ivory one in Mrs. Franklin’s knitting bag, and it lacked the stains ivory gains from use.

  * * * *

  Emily, wishing she had been able to telephone ahead, was pleased to see Mrs. Franklin coming out of Captain Bates’s office. She was dressed in black; her deep mourning veil covered her face and fell to her waist.

  “You might wish to stay, Mrs. Franklin. I have some interesting information along the lines you suggested to me yesterday.”

  Emily was unable to see the expression on her face as she followed Emily back into the office.

  “It is not my intention to interfere in police business, Captain Bates,” Emily began, “but I have one or two tidbits you might find useful.”

  Captain Bates gave her a skeptical look.

  Mrs. Franklin remained standing, clutching her knitting bag to her chest. Emily took the wooden chair by the door.

  “I know that Mr. Gooding saw Professor Cox between eight thirty and ten in the evening. I heard the Professor come in about ten thirty. I know that Mrs. Franklin arrived at the hotel just after Cox left. I also know she says she left about one thirty, leaving Mr. Gooding alone until Mr. Oliver arrived at eight in the morning.

  “Mr. Fleet and I saw the body taken to the van. We saw clearly that rigor had not set in yet. If Mrs. Franklin left when she says she did, she is in the clear.”

  Mrs. Franklin lifted her chin, causing the veil to flutter.

  “There is a bit of a problem, though.” Emily handed him the paper Sullivan had given her at breakfast.

  “Here is the name of the driver who transported both Mrs. Franklin and Mr. Oliver to and from the hotel. One of my fellow boarders comes from a family who works Boston cabs. He gave me the information this morning. Mrs. Franklin arrived at ten in the evening and left less than an hour before Mr. Oliver arrived, not in the middle of the night as she told me. Mr. Oliver arrived at eight in the morning and left after the police arrived. Thus, either could have been the killer.”

  “Is this right?” asked Captain Bates. He narrowed his eyes as he stared at Mrs. Franklin. “You lied about the time?”

  “Mr. Oliver must have done it,” said Mrs. Franklin. Her voice was calm, but she clutched her knitting bag tighter. “I had no reason, and he did.”

  Emily shook her head. “Mr. Oliver wanted Mr. Gooding to go on writing. He had little reason to want him dead. Even if they got into a heated argument, I doubt it would have come to blows.

  “I suggest you look at the address on the paper,” Emily went on. “The place where the cabby took Mrs. Franklin is 213 Commonwealth Avenue. It is also Mr. Oliver’s address. What is your relation to Mr. Oliver, Mrs. Franklin? Billy, your driver, seems to think Franklin is not your legal name.”

  The lady remained silent.

  “Is it possible that you were introduced to Mr. Gooding by Mr. Oliver, not as a companion, but as Mrs. Oliver?”

  Emily turned back to the policeman. “Professor Cox told me that Mr. Gooding owed Mrs. Franklin a good deal of money. She, herself, told me he had been repaying her for his hotel stay last summer. But Cox said the publisher pays for the hotel and meals. I think she was blackmailing him, although
she was just as vulnerable as he was. That was about the time the scandal broke at the college, so Mr. Gooding must have been smarting from that. He was threatening to give up writing, to give up coming to see her, and to give up paying her blackmail, possibly even to tell her husband of their affair. Hell hath no fury…”

  Mrs. Franklin stood ramrod straight; the knitting bag fell to the ground at her feet.

  Emily retrieved it, removed the ivory-handled tool and set it on the desk in front of the policeman.

  “This is called a stiletto. It fits the description of the murder weapon. It is discolored from constant use, but some of those stains could be Gooding’s blood. Why don’t you take a look at it, Captain Bates?”

  Cambridge Massachusetts, June 30, 1895

  Dear Susan,

  Well, I am off to Vermont. Charles and I always went back for a week or so every summer. We stayed until Mr. Lawrence and Charles could no longer bear each other’s company and then we fled back to Cambridge.

  I have always loved the Lawrences and they have loved me back. I think they tolerated Charles for my sake. The visits are very much easier now that Charles’s presence in their lives is only a granite monument in Evergreen Cemetery.

  William Thaw, Rachel’s husband, has taken the spot in the family business that Charles would have filled, had he chosen a different path in life. Both William and Charles were happy with the arrangement. I think Thaw is such a wonderful name for someone from Vermont. I have woken to frost on the lawn in July.

  The beautiful house sits on a hill overlooking the town and has a veranda around two sides. It is exactly the kind of house you would love.

  The Thaws have chosen to name their children Charles, William, and Charlotte. Thank Heavens neither you nor Anna chose family names (excepting Emma) for your children. We call the younger generation of Thaws Chaz, Willie, and Lottie, but it won’t be long before they are insisting on their full names.

  I will send everyone post cards and maple syrup.

  Love,

  Emily

  EMILY VISITS THE FAMILY

  Rutland, Vermont, July 1895