I pressed my feelings, the way one might a bruise. No, I was not heartbroken. Or humiliated. The doomsayers were right: dancing with a man was different. And it could lead to … divans. But I had been right, too, and so had Otelia Brooks. The body needed to move, even in ways deemed improper. Dancing—and divans—could be healthy. Energizing.
And I wasn’t sure in this case if either one was much more than that.
“Disappointed?” I said finally. “He’s a very good dancer.”
“So dance with him.”
“It’s that simple.”
She took my hand across the table. “Well, some things should be.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“You’re welcome.”
14
“With a crack of the whip and a wave of her chair / She said to that lion, now you stop right there…”
Leo had written a new song. Inspired by last night’s events, it was called “Lady Lion Tamer” and was already much admired, at least by the bored American Beauties waiting to have their wings applied. In high spirits, Leo finished with a ripple of notes ending with a buoyant bum bum on the low keys, and the ladies burst into applause.
I was not in high spirits. We were six hours away from curtain, and it did not seem improbable that the cast would collapse in shambles with the first wrong note, missed line, or costume mishap. All this would be witnessed by the press and a glittering collection of the wealthy, sensation seeking, and influential in the arts, who would then spread the word of the Rutherfords’ humiliation throughout the city. The champagne and oysters might keep them at bay for a few minutes. The six-course dinner at which the Beauties were artfully shared out among the guests would hold them a little longer. But by midnight, everyone would know: Dolly Rutherford’s “Stirring Scenes of the Emancipation” had been an utter flop. Not even the coronation of Miss Rutherford’s would nudge that news out of people’s minds. Witnesses to the epic embarrassment would be the most sought-after guests for weeks, encouraged to share the mortifying details again and again.
Leo’s assurance that all shows were shambles on opening night did nothing to calm my nerves. The paper-and-wire wings had only been completed that morning, and now they had to be fixed onto eleven smocks. Those same eleven smocks also needed hemming, as Mr. Rutherford had insisted that when the girls were lined up in a row, the nightgowns should align evenly. I knelt on the floor, letting Emily’s smock down and fighting off a headache. There was crowding and chatter all around me. Nearby, Mrs. Lonsdale and Mrs. Tallworthy were having a spirited conversation about the merits of the Savoy versus Brown’s. Mrs. Lonsdale was a great one for gesticulation, and with every fling of her hand she stepped backward and onto my skirt. Her aim was excellent; no matter where I moved my skirt, she landed on it. Since about three steps ago, she no longer felt it necessary to apologize, feeling that if she had done it so often, it was simply the way of the world.
My temper was not improved by exhaustion. We had returned from the Acme very late. I had stayed up later talking with Anna, and woken at seven this morning to remember the dispiriting truth that Bill Danvers was not the man who attacked Otelia Brooks.
Nor was he the man who killed Carrie Biel. After Emily knocked Danvers unconscious, Leo had asked his colleagues at the club if anyone could account for him the night of Carrie’s murder. Moira had been telling the truth when she said he was following her for much of that evening. That is, until bouncer Frank Walters decided he was becoming a nuisance and hit him with one of his legendary left hooks. After that, the waiters had carried him down to the cellar and locked him in for fun.
I looked to the stage, where Mr. Rutherford was directing the final moment of the pageant, when the entire cast would part and the winner would emerge from the back of the stage. We were fortunate that day to have the ebullient Mr. Rutherford. Everything had gone from squalid to spectacular, from dismal to dazzling. Every lady was lovely, the singing sublime, and the pageant itself a singular triumph that would have the city buzzing for weeks. Nay, months. Nay, years.
I looked up as squeals of excitement greeted the arrival of handsomely framed portraits of the previous Miss Rutherford’s. Their faces glided past me as the workmen carried them to the front: all the young women, hair sleek and full, expressions radiant and hopeful. Beneath each picture was a plaque with the year and name. Miss Rutherford’s 1903 to 1913. The frame for 1913 was empty but for a sign: WHO WILL IT BE?
Immediately, I lost all my Beauties as they raced to examine their predecessors. Approaching Mrs. Hirschfeld, who had come with the pictures, I asked her, “Do you have a favorite?”
“You know, I can’t say that I do. The Miss Rutherford’s have always struck me as a tad—” An eloquent ripple of the fingers stood in for the word “dull.”
“Certainly there’s a type,” I said, looking at the faces.
“Oh, the rules are quite strict. We measure them, you know. Not just the height and waist span. Girls of five feet four and no more than a hundred and twenty-five pounds. Space between the eyes, shape of the eyes.” She gave me a meaningful look. “Nose must be straight and not too prominent; mouth must be well formed, not vulgar. The skin shade—anything swarthier than a magnolia, unacceptable.”
Emily was well above five-four; again, I worried Mr. Rutherford was raising her hopes for reasons other than belief in her talent.
“Well, thank goodness I never entered,” I joked.
Taking me seriously, she looked me up and down. “You’re about the right measurements. Lovely nose, long lashes. But the eyes are much too sharp for a Miss Rutherford’s. And that hair has a bit of a curl to it. Oh, don’t be self-conscious; men must find it enchanting.” She looked over at her son. “Leo certainly seems to.”
Perhaps to get away from that awkward subject, we went to watch the arrangement of laurels around the portraits. Arms neatly crossed at her middle, Mrs. Hirschfeld made her way up the line. At one picture, she paused and let out a small, sad sound.
“What happened to…” I looked at the name. “Lottie Burckholdt?”
“Poor Lottie. I liked Lottie. She was a late addition, the eleventh girl. She came to us in a year resplendent with knock knees, thin bosoms, and pocked skin; she was a little bucked in the teeth, but had a life to her and simply gorgeous hair. Mr. Rutherford had his doubts, but I said she could smile mouth closed, and no one would see anything but that hair anyway. She’s healthy, I said; people want to see a girl with some spirit.”
And humor, I thought, looking at Lottie. Like the rest, she had her eyes trained on heaven, but you could sense the barely repressed guffaw.
“Didn’t she marry her millionaire?” I asked, referring to the Rutherford’s legend.
“She met a dockworker who left her dead by the river with her teeth knocked out.”
“Oh, dear.” I wondered how Rutherford’s had kept that sad tale out of the papers. It was hardly a fitting end for an American Beauty.
Then I heard Leo say, “Hello, Mother.”
“Leo, darling. Your tails are downstairs waiting for you. What are you doing away from the piano?”
“I am taking Miss Prescott to lunch at the canteen.”
Aware of Mrs. Hirschfeld—and Clara—I said truthfully, “I don’t think I have time, Mr. Hirschfeld.”
“For Rutherford’s world-famous meatloaf? Consumed in the company of Leo Hirschfeld? You have time.”
Pointedly taking my hand, he promised his mother to bring her a slice and led me—not too unwillingly—away from smocks and wings.
The employee canteen at Rutherford’s was well equipped with long tables and benches where workers could eat food brought from home or the day’s offerings, which were, as Leo had promised, meatloaf and gravy, potatoes and sprouts on the side. I hadn’t brought anything from the refuge, and my stomach gurgled. Leo, of course, charmed his way into a double helping of potatoes and extra gravy.
When we sat down, Leo said, “I wanted to tell you, Danvers
is done. Turns out he was shaking the girls down for a cut of everything they stole. I guess Tricker figures that’s his job.”
Bill Danvers with no employment could be an angrier Bill Danvers with more time on his hands, but at least he wouldn’t be paid to harass the women of the refuge. And perhaps Moira’s life would be easier. On the other hand, Sadie and Carrie’s killer was still on the street and unknown.
For a little while, we ate without talking. I was about to ask if Leo thought this evening’s performance would be dismal or outright disastrous when he said in a rush, “Look, what you said—Myrtle, Edith, Josephine—that’s not true. I don’t do that.”
I waited for him to define what exactly he did do.
“Yes, I will split a pastrami sandwich with a girl from time to time if Clara has class, and she always has class.… But it’s only a sandwich.”
Remembering the divan, I doubted that. “I think marriage means you eat at home.”
That sparked a rare show of irritation. “I’m not getting married to Clara. I’m not getting married to anyone. For one thing, I work too much. And for another, I’m not like most people. I don’t…” He held out his arm to indicate a straight line he apparently couldn’t follow. “I hear something, it takes over my brain, it’s all I can think about. I can’t turn it off. Sometimes I’m up till three in the morning, working. Who needs a husband like that? My neighbors already hate me.”
Self-serving—but I remembered the first day I met him, that sense that he absorbed all the sound around him and turned it into song. It would be hard to turn that off.
“And if I meet a girl I like, I … get obsessed with her, too. I know, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked you dancing. But you looked so sad and so pretty.”
I knew. He was not at all sorry he had asked me dancing, and he knew very well the word “pretty” was ringing in my ears, a frustrating distraction to the reality, which was that Leo Hirschfeld liked women far too much to restrict himself to just one. We were the elevated train, the ladies arguing, the laughter at the club … passing, random sounds to be turned into melodic fantasy. He would never love any girl as much as the ideal he sang to. Or the time he spent spinning the world’s sound into music.
He took up my hands. “I like you. I don’t want to not know you after tonight.”
“I like you, too.” I set his hand down. “But the next time you want to go dancing, ask Clara.”
“Clara doesn’t like loud bands.” He leaned his chin on his hand, gave me his big brown eyes. “You see my terrible dilemma?”
I was about to describe several far more terrible dilemmas that could befall him when I saw Orville Pickett come through the cafeteria door. He greeted one or two men at the end of the table and sat down next to them. Then he began to eat a sandwich, prepared no doubt by his mother.
“That’s Orville Pickett,” I told Leo.
Leo said, “Oh,” in a tone that indicated that was Orville’s misfortune.
Hunching down so Orville wouldn’t see me, I said, “Only Rutherford’s employees eat here, is that right?”
Leo indicated himself and me. “Or people working in the store. But he’s eating with the warehouse guys, so he probably works there. So what?”
“He lives in my neighborhood. He knew Sadie Ellis. She even … flirted a bit with him. Since Carrie Biel worked at Rutherford’s, it means he knew both women who were killed.”
Leo looked doubtful. “It’s a big store. Doesn’t mean he knew her.”
This was true. Who would know if Carrie and Orville had ever met? I thought of the last time I’d seen Carrie. Laughing behind the counter as she folded up that scrap of a negligee.
“Where are you going?” Leo asked as I stood up.
“I have to talk to your mother.”
Thankfully, Mrs. Hirschfeld was still in the Crystal Palace. In fact, she was just putting the last wings on Gertie Walsh’s smock when I returned. She smiled, and I had the briefest thought she might have changed her mind about me. But I put that aside and asked if I might speak with her in private.
Going to the far end of the hall, I said, “Do you remember Carrie Biel?”
“The poor girl who was murdered? Of course.”
“And do you happen to know an Orville Pickett?”
I didn’t want to give her any hints, so I waited while she consulted her prodigious memory. “Works in the warehouse. Unloads the trucks.”
“Yes, exactly. What I need to know is, did Orville Pickett know Carrie Biel?”
She frowned. “I wouldn’t—oh, now that I think of it, yes. He would show up on the floor from time to time. No business being there, and I spoke to him very sharply. Once I even mentioned it to Mr. Rutherford.”
I thanked her and turned to go. Then something occurred to me. “Mrs. Hirschfeld? When you say he works in the warehouse, what does that mean?”
“Rutherford’s prides itself on its vast selection, but we can’t keep everything at the store. So we have a warehouse. When we needed the extra nightgowns, you remember I called the warehouse?” I nodded. “Every day we do inventory and restock. Mr. Pickett is one of the men who drives the goods over here and unloads them to the storeroom. That’s how he saw Carrie. She was a good strong girl, and I would send her down to collect things.”
“And where is the warehouse?”
“Downtown. Near the Bowery, I think.”
Not too far from the refuge, I was willing to bet. I looked at poor Lottie Burckholdt’s portrait. Miss Rutherford’s 1910.
“How long has Mr. Pickett worked here?”
She thought. “The store congratulates employees on every five-year anniversary with the company. I seem to remember seeing his name on a recent list. Five years, I think.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Hirschfeld.”
* * *
In the few hours before the audience arrived, I went through my duties mechanically, even as my brain reviewed the dull little facts I had just learned and their terrifying meaning.
Orville Pickett worked at Rutherford’s.
He knew Carrie Biel. And Sadie.
And Lottie Burckholdt.
All three women were dead.
And Orville Pickett had most likely killed them.
Officer Nolan said it was possible that the women either knew the man who attacked them or felt safe enough around him that they were willing to go with him. And Orville Pickett had always seemed safe, a sort of overgrown toddler still tied to his mother’s apron strings.
Although one woman had heard screams that night. Mrs. Pickett, who had said a man accosted Carrie and that man was my uncle.
But she had lied. Because the man who had accosted Carrie had to be her own son. It was the only way that scenario made sense. What had Carrie said? Leave me alone? Take your hands off me? In the back of my mind, I had always wondered if the story sounded so false because I couldn’t believe my uncle at this stage of life would approach a young woman like that. Now I knew: he never had. To protect her son, Mrs. Pickett had simply replaced him with my uncle.
And now that I thought of it, she had never said outright that she had seen my uncle. Heard—that was what she had said. And knew. Even as she falsely accused someone of murder, she was sharp enough to leave room for error should the truth ever be revealed. What a horror she was. And what a horror she had created.
What was it like, I wondered, growing up with a mother so enraged by the physical allure of women? Who went on and on about illicit acts and the lives destroyed by them? She didn’t ever blame the men who bought the women’s services, I realized. No, it was always the women who drew men in, ruining their lives. And, of course, the men who helped them do it, like my uncle. No wonder Orville Pickett had never been seen with a girl; his mother would have branded any woman a harlot just for looking at him.
What would that do to you? How angry must you feel? Sadie’s harmless tease, showing a bit of her leg? And Carrie—thoughtful, cheerful Carrie, who would be kind to anyone
. He had seen her at the store. Would he have been outraged to see her visiting the refuge? The girl he liked, just another of “those” women, selling herself to men with money when she wouldn’t even give him the time of day!
Orville Pickett had grabbed Carrie on her way to the refuge. He had waited until she came out. And then he had killed her.
Several times that afternoon, I glanced at the entrance to the Crystal Palace, terrified that Orville would come through the doors. Leo reassured me that Rutherford’s kept a strict time clock; Orville would be expected back at the warehouse after lunch.
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
This was a very good question. I could go to Officer Nolan with Mrs. Hirschfeld’s account of Orville pestering Carrie, the fact that he had known both women, that he had access to an empty warehouse where he could have killed Carrie and a truck he could have used to transport her body. But that wouldn’t be enough. There would be no bloody clothes; Mrs. Pickett herself might have hidden or destroyed them. And surely Orville would have cleaned the truck, if he had used it to move poor Carrie.
But not everyone was an expert cleaner, I thought, and he would have been in a rush. The police had never checked the trucks or even the warehouse because they hadn’t known where to look. The evidence could still be there.
However, Mrs. Pickett would howl, and as I had said so many times to my uncle, people listened to her. She would insist I was only accusing her son to save my uncle. Faced with two women with opposing stories and the prospect of bringing scandal on a wealthy, influential businessman, the police might just shrug.
Unless the wealthy, influential businessman insisted.
I wondered how much George Rutherford knew about the people who worked for him. No one could accuse him of being distant; everything at Rutherford’s bore his fingerprints. But would he be familiar with the men who worked in the warehouse? Would he, frankly, care? I thought back to when he had sent me to Mrs. Hirschfeld; he had not given her name. She was only “his woman” on the third floor. Just as I was Louise’s woman, in the eyes of Mrs. Rutherford.
Death of an American Beauty Page 18