Crimson Snow (18 page)

As it happened, she was in luck. When she knocked on the door of the pathetic little house, it was opened by a man in a black cassock. Hilda didn't need to ask.

“Good morning. You will be Father Marciniak. I am Hilda Johansson. Do you speak English?”

“A little.” He bowed politely to her curtsey. “I take your basket, yes?”

“Yes. It is food for Mrs. Chudzik, from Mrs. Studebaker.” She was glad to hand over the basket, heavy with half a ham, eggs, some bacon, flour, butter, sugar, and a few other groceries.

“Oh, is good of you.”

“Of Mrs. Studebaker,” said Hilda firmly. “She gave the food. I brought it only.”

“Yes, yes,” said the priest, smiling happily. “I give to Mrs. Chudzik.” He gestured Hilda inside and called out in Polish. Immediately Mrs. Chudzik appeared, dressed in what was plainly her best to receive the priest.

She unleashed a torrent of Polish, and then turned anxiously to Father Marciniak.

“She says thank you,” he translated.

Hilda smiled. Mrs. Chudzik had said a great deal more than that. “Can you tell her I will bring her some new shoes and some warm clothing later?”

“Please?”

“Shoes.” Hilda lifted a foot. “Clothing. A coat.” She gestured toward herself. “I will bring soon. From Mr. Studebaker.”

“You give shoes?”

Hilda gave it up. “Yes. And a coat. And—do you know what a pension is?”

The priest shook his head helplessly.

“Never mind.” She turned to go, and then remembered something Mr. Lefkowicz had said. “Father, has Mrs. Chudzik heard from Nelka? A letter, perhaps?”

But the priest shook his head firmly at that. “No letter. Mrs. Chudzik not read.”

“She cannot read? Not even Polish?”

“Not read,” he repeated.

There was no point in pursuing it further. The priest either did not understand or was not willing to tell her anything. Hilda wished she knew which.

The January thaw was in full flow today, the air soft, the sun warm. Winter would not give in as easily as this. After so many years in South Bend Hilda knew there were storms to come. But the respite was pleasant—except for the mud.

Now where? She needed to talk to Erik, but first she would call on Mr. Lefkowicz. She wished she knew whether he was at home or at the police station. Probably at the police station. It was unlikely he would have two days off in a row.

He was at the station and came out to see her immediately, quelling his jeering colleagues. “I am sorry, Miss Johansson,” he said in an undertone. “They are not bad fellows, but they are rough. And I must go out on patrol soon.”

“It does not matter. I cannot stay, either. I want you to tell Mrs. Chudzik, when you have time, that her husband's pension will be coming to her again. Colonel George will see to it. And he gave me money to buy her shoes and clothing. I told the priest that, just now, but I do not know if he understood.”

The sergeant beamed at her. “She thinks you are an angel.”

“She does not know my temper,” said Hilda briskly. “There is one other thing. You said you thought maybe she lied about a message from Nelka?”

“It seemed to me that she hid something from me.”

Hilda nodded. “I asked the priest. He said—I think he said—that she could not read, not even Polish. But I am not sure, and I thought maybe he would lie to me, too, if she told him to. Can you try to find out?”

The sergeant stood up a little straighter. “Miss Johansson, I hope one day to be a detective. I will do what I can.”

He held out a hand and she shook it, to more derisive cries from his fellows.

The next stop was the hospital. It was several blocks away, but her boots were still dry, though terribly muddy. She wiped them carefully before going in the front door of the imposing brick building.

She had never been in a hospital, and the atmosphere frightened her. It was as hushed as a church but for the busy steps of nurses bustling across the large entrance hallway. They wore veils that reminded her of nuns. But this was a Methodist hospital. Surely there were no nuns here.

Hilda shivered a little. The building was cold, and she had no idea where to go to ask about Mr. Williams.

“May I help you, miss?” The voice came from a sort of booth off to one side of the big room. A woman, not in nurse's uniform, was seated behind an open window.

“Oh!
Ja
. Yes. I want to see Mr. Williams.”

“First name?”

Hilda realized that she had no idea. In all the years she had worked under him, it had never occurred to her that the butler had a first name. “I do not know. He is butler at Tippecanoe Place, and he is very ill. I am a maid there, and I worry.”

“Oh, yes.” The woman consulted a large book that looked like a ledger. “I'm afraid you can't see him.”

“Oh—but—can you tell me if he is better?”

“I'm sorry. We can discuss patients only with their families.”

Hilda was upset and her temper was rising. She had not walked all this way to be turned out without any information. “I wish to speak to his doctor, then.”

“He's busy, and he'll only tell you the same thing. We can't—”

“Why, Hilda! Have you come to ask about Williams?”

It was Mrs. George, clad in furs and wearing a corsage of violets. She looked very feminine in these stark surroundings, and very rich. The rules would surely not apply to such as her.

“Oh, madam, they will not tell me about him! Do you know? Is he—?”

She could not continue. Mrs. George laid a hand on her arm. “I've been up to see him. He's very weak, of course, but his fever has broken and the doctors think he's on the mend.”

“Oh, madam—” And then she was in tears, and never afterwards could she have told anyone why she cried.

OFFICERS GRASPING AT STRAWS AND MYSTERY
IS NO NEARER SOLVED THAN AT VERY FIRST

—South Bend
Tribune
   
February 6, 1904

 

 

 

18

I
T WASN'T EVEN MIDMORNING YET when Hilda and Mrs. Studebaker parted at the hospital, Mrs. Studebaker climbing into her carriage and Hilda walking down Main Street back toward the center of town. The next thing was to get a report from Erik, if she could find him.

As it turned out, there was no trouble about that. Her path took her right past the Oliver Hotel and on impulse she went inside. Andy was in the lobby idling against a pillar. He snapped to attention when he saw Hilda, and beckoned to her.

“Me an' Erik and the boys've found out some stuff,” he whispered, mindful of the hotel traffic bustling about them in the lobby. “I can't talk about it now, though. I'm on duty.”

“Where can I find Erik?”

Andy looked vastly disappointed. “I wanted to tell you myself.”

Hilda liked boys. She smiled. “I will let Erik tell me his part, and then I will come back and you can tell me your part. When are you relieved from duty?”

“I get a half hour off for lunch most days, around twelve.”

She made a quick decision. Mrs. Sullivan was probably not expecting her back at any particular time for lunch, and she had money, lots of money, in her pocket. “I will come at twelve and we will eat lunch together, if you would like that. I will treat you, anywhere you like.” It could, she thought, almost count as a legitimate expense. Andy was one of her sources of information. “But do you know where Erik might be?”

“I think he was going to the fire station. He reckoned he could get in some extra time with the horses, even if there wasn't any real work for him.”

Hilda nodded. “I think he loves those horses more than his family.”

Andy grinned. “He says they try to nip him sometimes, but they never try to boss him.”

Hilda laughed. “Twelve o'clock. And if you are not ready I will wait.”

The prospect of a visit to the fire house was pleasing. Of course, Patrick might not be there. But then again, he might. She quickened her steps.

She was glad, when she got to the stables, to sit down on a bale of hay. She had covered a lot of territory already that morning, and her feet were beginning to protest. The horses whinnied softly as she entered, and Erik's head popped up over the side of a stall.

“Ooh! I hoped you'd come. I've got a lot to tell you. Me and Andy—”

“I have already seen Andy,” she said hastily, “and I promised to let
him
tell me the things he learned. And if you will tell me what you learned, I will know everything.”

“But that's not fair.” Erik came out of the stall and pulled up his favorite bucket for a seat. “He found out a lot more than I did, 'cause he had all the bellboys workin' for him. Anyway we agreed that we would—what did he call it—would pool our information, so everybody'd know everything.”

Hilda laughed. She found it easy to laugh this morning, or cry. Something in her had been set free, somehow. “Very well, tell me everything.”

“Well—you know Andy was talkin' to all the other boys about where Mr. Perkins went while he was in town?”

“Yes. And did they know?”

“They knew a lot. See, it's like you always say about bein' a maid, how nobody even notices you're there, and they say all kinds of things?”

“Yes. Servants are invisible.”

“Well, it's the same with bellboys, only worse 'cause they're kids, and nobody thinks they know nothin'.”

“Anything,” Hilda corrected. “Hah! Your English is not so wonderful today, is it?”

Erik grinned, but plowed ahead with his story. “Well, so one of the boys—I think it was Dickie, or maybe Joe—”

“Never mind which. Go ahead.”

“It was Joe. I remember now. He got off the same time the man left the hotel, and he followed him.”

“What day was this?”

“On the Monday, the first day he was there, the man, I mean. So anyway, Joe didn't exackly follow him. He was just going the same direction the man was walking, because that's where he lives, Joe, I mean.”

Hilda sighed. Erik's narrative style lacked a certain zest. “Yes, I understand. Go
on.
”

“Well, I can't if you keep interrupting me! So he's going down the street, Washington Street, and Joe thinks maybe he's goin' to visit some of the swells as lives that way. 'Cause he's dressed fancy and Joe thinks he's rich, see? So after a few blocks Joe starts followin' him for real.”

Hilda frowned. “It would have been dark, if the man only got to the hotel at dinner time.”

“It was, Joe said, and cold fit to freeze a person solid. And Joe was hungry, too. But he got to thinkin' it was funny, see, this rich fellow walkin' all that ways when he could have hired a cab easy. And it was still on the way to Joe's house, so he just kept up with him. The man was walkin' fast, he said, but Joe wanted to go fast anyway, bein' so cold and hungry. But then pretty soon he'd passed the Studebaker place, and then even the Oliver place, and he turned right on LaPorte, goin' over toward Colfax. And Joe, he lives near Sven, so he shoulda turned left. But he was real curious by this time, 'cause the man was stoppin' every little while to look behind him, like he thought he was bein' followed.”

“He was,” Hilda pointed out logically.

“Yeah, but Joe doesn't think he knew that, 'cause Joe, he's good at sneakin' along real quiet, and it was dark. Not blinddark, see, 'cause there was a moon and snow, but you know what it's like in moonlight. You think you can see pretty good, but things look funny and it's hard to tell what they are. Joe figgered if he just held real still he'd look like a shadow. And it musta worked, too, 'cause the man just kept on goin'. And Hilda, you'll never guess where he ended up!”

Erik's story had caught Hilda's imagination. She forgot to be impatient, but leaned forward eagerly on her bale of hay. “Where?” she whispered.

“At Mrs. Schmidt's roomin' house! And that's where—”

“Where Miss Jacobs lived! What was he doing there?”

“That's the most excitin' part! Joe says the man didn't do nothin'—”

“Anything,” Hilda said automatically.

“—didn't do anything except stand outside in the bushes and watch the house. Didn't try to go in, didn't do noth—anything but hide and watch.”

Hilda shivered. The stable wasn't very cold, but the image of that man waiting in the dark, watching—for what? A chance to kill? “How long did he stay there?” she breathed. “All night?”

Erik shrugged. “Joe don't—doesn't know. He was just about dead of cold, and starvin' too, and he had to go on home.”

“Did he follow the man the next day?”

“He was off the next day.”

Hilda made an irritated noise. “That is bad luck. I don't suppose he told any of the other boys what he'd seen.”

“Not then. He had to do chores for his ma all day and didn't see none of his pals.”

“Erik! Didn't see any of his friends.”

Erik shrugged. “He told them when he came back to work on the Wednesday and they was all talkin'—”

“Were all talking.”

“—were all talkin' about how the fella'd done a bunk.”

Hilda opened her mouth to reprove him about his speech once more, but thought better of it. “And what did they have to say to Joe's story? The other boys, I mean?”

“Thought it was funny, like. But none of 'em'd seen him on the Tuesday. 'Course, we ain't talked to everybody yet, all the boys on all the different shifts.”

Hilda stood up. She was getting cold. “Well, it is very interesting, what you have told me. I must try to find out why the man did what he did. That may be a way to find out who he is. You have done well, little—my brother. But Erik, you must try not to use so much slang and bad English. You do not want to be a stable boy all your life.”