Crimson Snow (6 page)

However, it was just as well. It meant that when she arrived at the Hibberd house she wasn't out of breath. She went around to the kitchen door and knocked decorously.

The door was answered by the butler, who happened to be passing. He knew Hilda. His face set in a frown.

“Please, Mr. Leslie, I am sorry to bother you, but I have a message for Norah. May I see her for a moment?”

“You may not. She is out on an errand for Mrs. Hibberd.”

Hilda had prepared for this possibility. “Then would you ask her, please, sir, to stop at Tippecanoe Place on her way home? It is very important, or I would not ask.”

The butler opened his mouth, probably to ask what was so all-fired important. Hilda smiled sweetly. “I must go, sir. They will be needing me. Thank you, sir.” She turned and moved away as quickly as she could on the icy path. Mr. Leslie, she knew, was far too dignified to shout after her. She knew also that his pompous façade hid an indecisive mind. He would be almost certain that her message was frivolous, but the more he thought about it, the less certain he would become. With any luck, he'd deliver the message and she'd get to see Norah this evening.

She slipped and stumbled her way back to Tippecanoe Place, changed her stockings and dried her shoes as best she could, and went back to work, drooping with fatigue, but buoyed up by the evening's possibilities.

More news and rumors arrived with the afternoon deliveries of groceries and meat. The police had made an arrest. No, they hadn't, but they were looking for a college athlete with whom Miss Jacobs had quarreled. He was a Notre Dame student, a football star. No, he wasn't, he had already graduated. He had graduated from Indiana University, not Notre Dame, and he lived in South Bend. No, Elkhart, where Miss Jacobs had lived with her parents before coming to South Bend. No, a psychic had been consulted, and she said the man in the long, dark overcoat was the one, and he was a prominent South Bend businessman. No, that was wrong, she had said…

Hilda stopped listening. She wasn't interested in rumor. She wanted facts, and she might find a few of those later in the newspapers. Meanwhile she fixed her mind on what she was going to say to Norah, and how they could arrange a meeting to really talk.

Mr. Williams was still feeling poorly and keeping to his room when the papers arrived at the back door. The ground floor of Tippecanoe Place, which housed the dining rooms as well as the backstairs premises, was, rather oddly, a semi-basement. Since the great mansion was built into the side of a hill, the front rooms had large windows and a view, but the back door was at the bottom of a flight of steps leading down from the driveway above. One of Anton's jobs was to keep the steps clear of debris, and in winter, of snow. Today, with Mr. Williams ailing and not on the alert, Anton had “forgotten” the task. The bottom landing was six inches deep in snow, and both the
Times
and the
Tribune
were quite wet.

Hilda, rejoicing, collected the papers and took them to the laundry. It was plainly now her duty to take over Mr. Williams's task of ironing the papers and delivering them to Colonel George's study. It would take longer than usual, since they were so wet, but that hardly mattered. Colonel George barely glanced at the papers, anyway, except for the financial news. She could take her time, and if in the process she happened to read some of the stories, Mr. Williams could hardly blame her for that. She set the irons to heat on the laundry stove and began to read eagerly.

The murder case was the lead story in both papers. The
Tribune
was critical of the police, saying that a murder on a well-traveled street should surely have been solved by now. Hilda paid scant attention. The
Tribune
was always critical of the police. Ever since Mayor Fogarty, a Democrat, had been elected, the
Tribune
had taken the view that the city was going straight to the dogs. The
Times,
of course, laid any shortcomings in city departments to the deplorable state of affairs Mayor Fogarty had inherited from the previous Republican administration. Aside from being offended when the
Tribune
published scurrilous anti-Irish cartoons on the front page, Hilda made it a policy to ignore the political posturings. She tried to winnow out facts from opinion in the stories, and concentrated on what was really important.

The irons were hot. She applied one to the front page of the
Tribune
and continued to read. At least one of the rumors turned out to have some basis in fact, if the paper was to be believed. The police were indeed looking for a man, said to be a college athlete, who had recently called on Miss Jacobs at her rooming house and “made himself objectionable.” There was no further information about who the man might be, or where he might be found, or indeed in what way he had offended the young teacher.

Hilda's imagination took flight at that. The man might have done any number of things. He might have brought her an unsuitable gift, perhaps a late Christmas gift, something too expensive or too personal. Of course, if they had been alone in the room (unlikely, but possible), he might have attempted liberties, verbally or even physically. It was a pity the police had been able to learn no more, but apparently the incident had been reported in a letter from Miss Jacobs to her mother in Elkhart, and the mother was too prostrate with grief to be interviewed.

Hilda read on. Miss Jacobs had evidently struggled with her attacker, for her hair pins were strewn the length of the alley. One or two boards of the picket fence at the far end of the alley were torn loose, apparently as Miss Jacobs made a desperate attempt to prevent her captor from dragging her away. Blood stained the snow everywhere. The police speculated that the attacker had struck Miss Jacobs a blow on the head that failed to kill her or even render her unconscious, and that several more blows were then struck in the cab shed, where blood was found on cab wheels, floor, and walls. Her underclothing was torn, her skirt was ripped from its belt, and there was a bloody handprint on her bodice. It was assumed that assault had been the motive for the murder.

Much of that was a repeat of yesterday's information, and Hilda stopped reading. Her mind was filled with horrified speculation. The newspaper stopped short of saying that she had been raped, but then it probably wouldn't. Such words were not used in a family publication. But torn underclothing?

A curl of smoke rose from under the iron. Hilda hurriedly removed it, pulled away the corner of paper that had been charred, and went on to the
Times.

The
Times
was slightly more sensational in its reporting style than the
Tribune.
Its story listed many of the same details, but made much of the report of a psychic from Elkhart, who claimed to have handled some of Miss Jacobs's clothing and thus obtained a clear vision of what had happened. The woman, who went by the name of Madame Rosa, claimed that a tall man in a dark overcoat was the murderer, and that he had a
red
mustache!

The man in the overcoat had not been mentioned yesterday in either newspaper. Hilda frowned. How, then, could Madame Rosa—or whatever her name really was—have known about him in such detail? Hilda put no stock at all in psychics or mediums or séances or any such supernatural claptrap, but how—

Then her brain took over again. The newspapers hadn't printed the prevalent rumors, but the so-called psychic had heard them, just as Hilda had, and hadn't scrupled to use them. Hilda snorted and removed the iron just in time to prevent another scorched page.

There wasn't a great deal more to be learned. Hilda skimmed rapidly, catching a few words here and there as she ironed. She stopped at a small heading:
MISS JACOBS WAS AFRAID
.

The
Times
reported that two days before she was killed, the young woman had been at home at her rooming house, entertaining a friend. As they sat in the front parlor, a step was heard on the porch outside. “She was frightened,” the friend reported. “She turned pale and stood up, very agitated. She said, ‘I wonder who can have come to see me.' I thought that was strange, for there was no reason to believe the person outside was calling on Miss Jacobs. She trembled as she went to the front door and opened it, shielding herself behind it as she did so.”

The caller, it turned out, was no caller at all, but Mrs. Schmidt, the owner of the house, returning from an errand. Hilda thought about that as she finished ironing the papers and carefully folded them for Colonel George. Why had Miss Jacobs been so fearful that the footstep of her landlady, which should have been familiar, sent her into a nervous fit? What—or who—was she afraid of?

Whatever it was, it had caught her in the end.

The maid has a heart, the natural affections of a young woman;
she likes to be admired, to think that there is someone
who esteems her above all the world.

—
The Complete Home

 

 

 

6

H
ILDA TOOK THE NEWSPAPERS up to Colonel George's office. He wasn't in, so she laid them on his desk and took a moment to look the room over and make sure it was in order, or as much order as she could produce. Her employer was not a tidy man, so letters and envelopes and scraps of paper were strewn all over the big desk, but Hilda knew she dared not disturb them. The colonel knew where everything was, as unlikely as that might seem, and would roar his displeasure at anyone who moved anything. At least the visible surfaces were free of dust and the few ornaments in the room were spotless. The door to the safe—#x2014;a walk-in vault, really—was, of course, closed and locked. Hilda didn't know exactly what was kept in there, but she knew that a footman who ventured to peek in, one day when the door had been left open, had been sacked without a reference. “And lucky not to be sent to jail,” Mr. Williams had said of the incident, which had happened before Hilda came to work at the house. “You remember, girl, that you are never, under any circumstances, to go near that safe.”

Well, she was neither a thief nor a fool, she thought as she left the room. She had no wish to know what was in the safe. Or if she did, she acknowledged in a burst of inner honesty, she would control her curiosity. She couldn't afford to be thrown out on the street…and that brought her thoughts back around to the most important subject. What future lay ahead for her and Patrick?

She got through the rest of the afternoon's drudgery automatically. She performed tasks she could have done in her sleep, and chivvied the under-housemaids to perform theirs, without giving more than a quarter of her mind to the job. When at last five o'clock came, she pulled her cloak over her uniform and slipped out the back door and up the outside steps to wait for Norah.

Hilda saw Norah before Norah saw her, and Hilda's heart sank. This wasn't the Norah of the old days, this woman who trudged up the back drive, her body drooping with weariness. She, Hilda, was tired, too, but not bone-weary. Norah looked ready to drop, and the first thing Hilda said when her friend got close enough was, “Hurry! Come in and sit down. There is a good fire in the servants' room, and I can make you some coffee.”

 “Can't. Sean'll be gettin' home and expectin' his supper. Anyway, Mr. High-and-Mightiness would never allow it.”

“He has taken to his bed. He is sick with something. And Sean can wait, for a change. Norah, you must sit down and get warm, even if you do not have coffee. You look terrible!”

“Always were the soul of tact, weren't you?” But Norah allowed herself to be taken inside, divested of her hat, cloak, and wet shoes, and installed in the most comfortable chair in the room, her feet propped up near the fire.

“If the old tyrant catches me in his chair—” Norah began.

“He will not. He is in bed, I told you. And he has no control over you, not anymore.”

Norah sighed and wiggled her warming toes. “He does over you, though. Suppose somebody tells him?”

Hilda tossed her head. “Let them. I might not be here forever, anyway.”

“Hilda!” Norah sat up straight and stared at her. “Do you have something to tell me?”

“To ask you. Oh, Norah, I need your advice—yes, Maggie, what is it?”

The waitress stood in the door, hands on hips. “Mrs. Sullivan said as I was to get you to help set the table for dinner tonight, as there's guests and Mr. Williams isn't fit for a thing, and
some
of us is run off our feet.”

Hilda looked at the clock on the mantel. “Dinner is at eight, as usual, is it not?”

“Yes, but there's our supper, too—”

“I have finished with my work for the afternoon. Now I speak with my friend. I will help you when it is time.”

“Well, of all the—it must be nice to be you, take time off whenever you please, entertain your friends,
and
in Mr. Williams's chair!”

She flounced off, and Norah raised an eyebrow. “Her face'd sour milk, that one. She'll make trouble if she can.”

“She makes trouble all the time. She does not like me, nor I her. But Norah, maybe it does not matter. You see, Patrick wants to marry me.”

“Tell me somethin' I don't know.”

“I mean really. And now, or soon, anyway. He thinks there is a way.”

“Ooh! Tell!”

“Patrick's Uncle Dan wants to make him a partner. With Cousin Clancy off to New York, and planning to stay there, Mr. Malloy has no son here to carry on the business when he retires. And he is not a young man, and he has always loved Patrick like a son. So he wants him to leave the fire department and come into the business, so he—Patrick, I mean—can take over one day.”

“Glory be to God, you'll be rich!”

“Patrick will be rich. Well, he will be comfortable, at least. But I—nothing is settled about our marrying. I am still Swedish, and he is still Irish, and our families—”

“Now, you look here!” (It was an unnecessary command. Hilda was studying Norah's face earnestly.) “How old are you, anyway?”