Struggling to sit up, I said, “Uncle.”
“Mrs. Tyler said you were not to talk.”
His voice was nervous, hesitant. He sat in my chair close to the bed; his legs had always been short, and it made him seem small.
“I didn’t know where you’d gone,” he said.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t think.”
“Mr. Pickett informed us. Apparently it was in the papers. He … assumed you would be with us. He wished to know whether you were all right. Are you? All right?”
His hands were at his stomach, fingers tangled. He twisted his ring finger quite cruelly, and I said, “Yes, I’m fine.” I stopped his hand. “Truly.”
“I have been to see Miss Brooks. To thank her. She explained … what Mr. Rutherford was. That not everyone knows yet, what he was. Did you know, when you went to his office?”
“I suspected. That’s why I went. I thought there might be proof he killed Carrie and Sadie.”
“Jane…” He sounded distressed, disapproving.
“Was I supposed to let him get away with it? Let them charge you with murder? Close the refuge?”
“There were other ways.”
“There was not another way.” I had spoken too harshly, and my throat hurt. But I said it again. “There was not another way. The only thing to do now is to make sure Otelia Brooks doesn’t pay for that fact.”
As I spoke, I was aware of an echo. Someone had said these things before. Or used that tone before. Determined. Stubborn. Unswayable. Infuriatingly so, in fact.
My uncle was smiling. He had heard the echo, too.
“Yes,” he said. “That is right.” And then, for the first time since our first meeting all those years ago, he took my hand and said again, “That is right.”
Then I said, “I want you to tell me.”
He was puzzled by the change in subject. After a moment he said, “Ah.”
“Privacy is one thing,” I said. “This is a secret, and I don’t think we should have secrets between us. We are family. In our way.”
“And what is a secret other than something one party wishes to keep private and another wants to know against their wishes?” When I didn’t reply, he sighed. “Yes, I saw a woman, and yes, I went into her place of business. And that woman and that business would be seen as illegal and unsavory by most.”
Well, I had asked to know, and if my face went red and I found my gaze fixed on the coverlet, I had only myself to blame. “I don’t see why you didn’t just tell the police that. No doubt it’s what they assumed.”
“Because Miss Bullotte asked me not to.”
He said the name casually, assuming knowledge on my part. I was about to say, Who on earth is Miss Bullotte?
Then I remembered. “You were with the Duchess?”
My uncle looked curious. “Why do you call her that?”
“She calls herself that, and that is hardly the point. I—”
There were too many questions in my mind, and all of them were impossible.
In a rare act of sensitivity, my uncle said, “My friendship with Miss Bullotte goes back some years. We both have a care for the women in this neighborhood who work in a certain trade. She admires the work we do at the refuge and has even contributed funds. She herself has no moral qualms about her employment, but she does understand that it is not for every woman, and not every woman has her as an employer. That is one of the reasons she came out to defend the refuge against Mrs. Pickett. She was extremely distressed when you were attacked by their group.”
That attack had occurred the day before Carrie was murdered. “Was that why you went to see her the second time?”
“To thank her, yes. Also to say I felt it would be safer if she did not continue her presence. Provocation was not what the situation needed.”
“And the first time? The night Sadie was killed?”
“I enjoy her company,” my uncle said simply.
I considered for a moment, then said, “Well, yes. She seems an exceptional woman.”
“I’m sorry I was not more forthcoming with you. But it has always been Miss Bullotte’s view that a public announcement of our friendship would serve neither of us well. Also, that it is no one’s business.”
I nodded, even as I thought, It should be my business. On my next day off, I would pay a call on Miss Bullotte to thank her. Or I might suggest she come to supper at the refuge. After all, if there was this friendship, we ought to get to know each other.
Then I realized my uncle probably had no more desire for me to be acquainted with Miss Bullotte than I had for him to be acquainted with Leo. That had been my business.
“Just don’t tell me I owe Clementine Pickett an apology.”
He smiled. “I would never tell you that.”
* * *
On the excuse that he was needed at home, William returned from Washington, determined, he said, never to go near the place again. Louise was overjoyed to have him back and so the Tyler house was a happy place. Still, there was pain. Nightmares, in which George Rutherford was not dead and Otelia Brooks had not come. Once, trapped in sleep, I found myself back in his office, the walls and ceiling closing in, his fingers hard on my throat and every second, less air. I was dimly aware of twisting, trying to call out. And then a different hand, gentle on my head, a reminder that no, no, that was over now, all over. Just a dream.
Two days after my uncle’s visit, I visited Otelia Brooks at Blackwell’s Island Penitentiary. The sight of her in drab prison garb, her hair pulled back and bunched behind her head, hurt my heart. That I wasn’t rotting in the ground was due to her. That she was in this place was due to me.
“We’re going to get you released” was the first thing I said when we were seated on rough stools at the end of a long table where prisoners met with visitors.
“I know you’ll try.”
Her voice was not unkind, but it was a tone you might use with a child. And like a child, I repeated myself, saying, “We are.”
In the silence that followed, I thought to ask, “How on earth did you know where I was?”
She sighed, clasped her hands in her lap. “After you came to see me, I felt badly. You asked for help, I didn’t give it. I asked myself what would have happened if you hadn’t opened the door to me that night. And even though I knew the police weren’t going to listen to me, I felt I had to try. At least see this man you thought might be the man who did it.
“So I called the home of Mrs. Tyler, and the housekeeper told me you were all at Rutherford’s for some pageant. I came over there. They didn’t want to let me in. Store closed. But I told the man at the entrance I was there for Mrs. Tyler, so he let me up. In the lobby I saw that painting of … that man.” Her head jerked in an odd way. “And that’s when I remembered.
“I made it upstairs to the hall.” A rise of the eyebrows made it clear what she thought of that scene. “Needless to say, I wasn’t welcome. I told them I was looking for Mrs. Tyler, but they either didn’t believe me or just wanted me out. I said, Well, if I can’t see her, may I speak to the woman who works for her? That was when a young man came up to me and asked if he could help.”
Leo, I thought.
“He said you’d gone off to Mr. Rutherford’s office. And I knew that was not somewhere you should be, so I asked him where it was. And you know the rest.”
For a moment I considered what would have happened if Otelia Brooks had not changed her mind, if she had been a step slower, or walked through the lobby on a route that did not take her by the Rutherford portrait. Then I took a deep breath. Because I still could.
“There’s a safe in his office,” I told her. “I’ve told the police about it. Sadie’s stocking was missing. So was Carrie Biel’s bracelet. I feel sure he kept them, along with your scarf. If the police find them, it will be proof of what he was.”
“We’ll see.”
“And I’ll testify if there’s a trial, but there won’t be a trial, I’m sure. They’ll have
opened the safe by then.”
She smiled tightly, nodded. But she was not convinced.
“Oh, and I want you to speak with Miss Dodson. The young woman who came with me that day? And a Mr. Behan; he writes for the Herald.”
“Miss Jane, I want you to listen to me for a moment. Stop talking.”
I had one more thing I meant to tell her, an important thing. But then I realized she had asked me to stop talking. So I stopped.
“I didn’t do it for you. This is not your fault.”
“Of course it is. If I hadn’t come to see you, if I hadn’t gone to see George Rutherford, you would not have been in a position where you had to shoot him.”
“You put me in that position, yes. But I didn’t have to shoot him.”
“I wouldn’t be alive if you hadn’t.”
“Yes, but I shot him for my own reasons.” She let me take that in, then said, “So I will speak with Miss Dodson and Mr. Behan. And I appreciate your willingness to speak for me. But I think you and I both know there will be a trial, and we know how that trial will end. And when it ends, I want you to remember that I shot that…”
Her raised hand went stiff as she thought of George Rutherford.
“… for my own purposes. I think our time is up, Miss Jane.”
* * *
As promised, Michael Behan wrote a stirring tale of virtue delivered from the despoiler’s foul hand. I retained my role as St. Agnes, the virginal and pure maid, and Otelia Brooks was cast as the avenging angel who had preserved my chastity.
“She saved my life,” I pointed out to him.
“For my readers, your chastity’s more important.”
As he could not yet accuse George Rutherford of actual murder, only a callous disregard for my need to breathe, he invited his readers to wonder what sort of man would devote so much time to dressing—or was it undressing?—women. Eloquently, he sneered at a man who would enrich himself at the cost of his fellow man’s impoverishment; why, how many husbands were on the verge of ruin because their wives could not stay out of the shops? At the same time, he sympathized with women who could not afford to shop at Rutherford’s, suggesting that what happened to me might happen to any genteel yet poor girl who stepped foot in that palace of vanity and avarice. How noble, how inspiring—the spectacle of one of the city’s working women coming to the aid of another! He called upon future jurors to recall their finer natures, their wives to remind their husbands of their duty to protect and defend ladies from the likes of George Rutherford. For a tale that skated lightly over the facts of the matter—which were far worse—it was a compelling narrative.
Ella Dodson stuck more closely to the truth, regaling her readers with the triumphs of a woman who had overcome tragedy to start her own respected business and now faced new tragedy because she had saved a woman from the hands of a monster. Like Michael Behan, she could not reveal the full extent of Rutherford’s crimes, but her message that certain people were allowed to get away with assault and others punished when they fought back was not lost on readers. Otelia Brooks might have chosen to keep to herself, but her customers and neighbors were ready to come to her defense, especially the intimidating and influential Mrs. Edwina Cross, whom I had met at the salon with her granddaughter. Ministers spoke on Otelia Brooks’s behalf in churches. Civic leaders demanded to meet with city officials, and people stood vigil outside the prison where she was held.
And yet the safe remained unopened. Dolly Rutherford was adamant: nothing of her slain husband’s should be touched. She was in mourning and quite unable to admit police into the place where her husband’s life had ended at the hands of a madwoman. There was considerable sympathy for her. Many Rutherford’s customers remembered George Rutherford as a wonderful man. Incapable of cruelty to women. Why, said Mrs. Tisch, were it not for George Rutherford, she might have worn chartreuse to the Eaglemonts’ regatta picnic—and that would have been a genuine tragedy. Mrs. Worplesdon said whatever social success she had, she owed fully to Mr. Rutherford, who had put her in a Poiret dress the night she met Mr. Worplesdon. The impact of the dress was such that he had proposed, wed, and perished in the space of a year, leaving her with a massive fortune. What dress could do more?
There were other voices, however. Two former American Beauties recalled his habit of entering the dressing room without knocking. One observed that Mr. Rutherford was not always as delicate as he might have been about the sanctity of the female form. Arms were yanked, backsides crudely inspected, features harshly judged. But unspoken or understood in what was not said was that Mr. Rutherford was, after all, a man. Really, an artist in his own way. And women, some women, would offer what they could …
That, according to Dolly Rutherford, was what I had been doing in his office that day. Offering. Persistently. So persistently that Mr. Rutherford had no choice but to physically throw me out of his office. Of course, very few people believed that story, although they were tactful enough not to say so. The truth of the matter was obviously that I had made myself available and then threatened to tell his wife. What man wouldn’t want to strangle a girl who did that?
In that version of events, Otelia Brooks was my accomplice, arriving to catch us in the act and increase the pressure.
And so the safe remained unopened.
* * *
On a day in early April, they set the date for Otelia Brooks’s trial. And I asked to see Harry Knowles.
“Are you sober?” was the first thing I asked when we met in the park outside the Herald.
“Mostly.”
“I’m here to thank you.” If possible, the piggy eyes narrowed behind the fringe of dirty blond hair. “You made your readers care about Sadie and Carrie. That’s something few people were willing to do in their lifetimes.”
“And?”
“Because your readers care about Sadie and Carrie, they care about who killed them. Do you? Really care about who killed them?”
His eyes were almost shut; it occurred to me the sun’s glare might be a trial to a man whose brains were swimming in alcohol. “Behan says you think it was George Rutherford.”
“Because George Rutherford said it was George Rutherford. There’s a safe in his office. He took things from Sadie and Carrie, a stocking and a bracelet, and I think he kept them in there. But Dolly Rutherford won’t let the police open the safe. I need you to ask why not.”
“Hard to attack a widow…”
“She’s a rich woman who looked the other way while her husband assaulted other women. Maybe she didn’t know what he was. But she has no right to stop us from finding out. Not if it means Otelia Brooks goes to the chair.”
“Behan’s already got the story that Rutherford was a cad. I don’t see what my story is.”
“Rutherford the killer. You’re good at making people angry, Mr. Knowles. Ask your readers to demand they open the safe. Tell them to stay out of Rutherford’s until they do. Open the safe, that’s the headline.” Then, as he got up to leave, I said, “By the way, that phone call to the refuge?”
He turned. I could see the thought that he had made threats in a drunken stupor haunted him.
“It wasn’t you, Mr. Knowles. That call came the day I met George Rutherford. I needed to get an answer from him about costumes and he wouldn’t listen, so finally, I just stood in his way. He hated women being where he felt they shouldn’t. I imagine he felt I was ‘coming after him,’ so he threatened to come after me.”
After a long pause, Harry Knowles said, “Thank you. For telling me that.”
Michael Behan was right. Harry Knowles had his good days. And on those good days in the spring of 1913, he called forth the righteous in defense of Sadie Ellis, Carrie Biel, Lottie Burckholdt, and—although they didn’t know it—Otelia Brooks. For days, OPEN THE SAFE! blared forth in bold black ink on the front page of the Herald. What was Rutherford’s hiding? Who would demand justice for the innocent and the slain? He got Officer Nolan to express regret that the police were being
hampered in their pursuit of the truth. Surely, such a man as George Rutherford had nothing to hide. Far better to clear his name of all suspicion. I had no way of knowing, but something told me that Mrs. Hilquit and others of Mrs. Pickett’s brigade switched their Wednesday afternoons from street prayer to letter writing.
And in the end, they opened the safe. I had a bad day waiting to hear the results. What if Dolly Rutherford somehow got inside and removed evidence? What if there had been no evidence to remove? Time and again, I brought to mind the memory of Sadie’s calf, splattered with blood—only visible because her black stocking was gone.
They found Sadie’s stocking. And Carrie’s bracelet. And several other items that would never be returned to the families of the unknown women who had died at George Rutherford’s hands. Among them was the old blue scarf Norman Brooks had given to Otelia, which I said should be returned to her as soon as the investigation was concluded. After the safe was opened, the police had grounds to search the Rutherford warehouse. They found a small basement room, barely larger than a closet; it was padlocked shut. Inside was what the papers quickly dubbed “a true chamber of horrors.”
Gripped by the revelations about George Rutherford, the public forgot his killer. Otelia Brooks was found guilty of owning a firearm without a license—but nothing more. Harry Knowles celebrated his victory privately at the Dump, but both Ella Dodson and Michael Behan were at the prison when she was released. They had entered a sort of competition as to who could cover the Otelia Brooks story to greater effect. To that end, they had brought their newspapers and exchanged copies, reading as we waited.
“What’s this?” Behan pointed at the page.
Miss Dodson looked. “I believe it’s the word ‘white,’ Mr. Behan.”
“Why on earth would you write that? Officer Dennis Nolan, white.” He pulled a face at me. I declined comment.
Death of an American Beauty Page 21