Death in Saratoga Springs (6 page)

Rachel glared at him behind her fan and whispered, “Jed, you should look pleased. People are curious about your experience in Georgia. It must have been exciting and terribly important. After all, you and your comrades brought the war to an end and saved the Union.”

“Nothing glorious about it,” he snarled. “Dirty business. Sherman said it was hell.”

As the orchestra launched into the tune and the crowd joined in, Captain Crake fell into uneasy thinking. Who had given his name to the conductor and had requested the song? Rachel seemed as surprised as he.

This wasn't the first worrisome allusion this summer to his past life. An hour ago, heads turned when he walked into the dining room. At dinner, perfect strangers inquired politely about his private life in New York City, doubt lurking in their voices. Enemies had brought tales about him from the city and were stoking curiosity. His spies in the city had earlier warned him that private detectives were asking questions that linked him to the mysterious disappearance of prostitutes. He'd put a stop to the snooping, but rumors persisted.

He suffered through the song; but when it finished, he leaned toward his wife. “My arthritis is killing me. I'm going to our rooms for my medicine. I'll come back as soon as I feel better.” She frowned, then shrugged; but he shuffled away.

For the summer, he had rented a suite of rooms on the ground floor of one of the hotel's so-called cottages. At the door he fumbled with the key. His eyesight had failed to the point that he had to feel for the lock. Finally, he got the key in and turned it. “Damn!” he exclaimed. His wife had left the door unlocked. Silly, careless woman! She kept valuable jewelry in her bedside cabinet. Anyone could walk in and steal it.

He let himself in and went directly to the washroom. The laudanum wasn't where he had left it. His wife was constantly moving things around and he had to hunt for them. Eventually, he found the drug, prepared a dose, and drank it down. While he waited for its soothing effect, he stretched out on a divan and fell into a fitful sleep.

Memories from the war came back again to haunt him. Body parts—human and animal—melded into grotesque monsters. Lurid flames leaped from burning buildings. Screams of women and men pierced his ears. A beautiful woman's defiant face, battered and bruised, loomed up before his eyes. He tried to drive these images away but couldn't.

Then he woke up, soaked in sweat. He had no idea how long he slept. The room was dark except for a thin shaft of gaslight slanting through the transom window. Music played in the distance. A floorboard creaked. For a moment he lay still and listened. Someone was in the room.

He called out, “Anyone there?”

A board creaked again, this time closer. A dim light from a lantern shone on him. Groggy from the drug, Crake struggled in vain to rise. A shadowy figure approached him, and a spark of light glinted off metal. A searing pain ripped through his chest. Life ebbed from his body.

New York City
Monday, July 9

 

T
wo days later at midmorning, a pale and agitated aide rushed up to Pamela Thompson. “One of our girls is in trouble.”

On vacation for two weeks, Pamela was working at St. Barnabas Mission. The first thought to leap to her mind was an unwanted pregnancy. “Who is it?”

“Francesca Ricci,” the aide replied. “But it's not what you're thinking. In Saratoga Springs they say she was trying to steal something and killed a rich man. She's in jail.” The aide handed Pamela a telegraphed message from Helen Fisk, her friend and patron of St. Barnabas.

Pamela stared at the message, shocked and incredulous. Her knees began to buckle. She lowered herself into a chair and breathed deeply. Francesca was her ward and a friend, and had lived with her up to a month or so ago.

There couldn't be two Jed Crakes. The murdered man had to be the Captain Crake whom Pamela investigated a few months ago. When she last heard of him, he was ill but still alive in New York City. That he should die violently at Francesca's hand must be a mistake.

“Would you speak to her mother? Mrs. Fisk sent a copy of the message to her.”

“Of course.” Still shaken by the news, Pamela followed the aide into a parlor where Signora Ricci was sitting. A slender, careworn widow and too ill to care for Francesca, she had given up the girl to the mission.

“My daughter, Francesca, wouldn't murder anyone,” she exclaimed in heavily accented English. “Can you help her?”

“I'll try.” She calmed and comforted the anxious mother, then asked if Francesca had reported having any problems in Saratoga Springs. Her occasional notes to Pamela were brief and cheerful.

“Oh no, she has written that she was pleased with her work and the people were kind to her.”

Pamela thought that's what a daughter would write to keep her mother from worrying. “I'll see what I can do. At the least I can arrange for legal counsel.”

An exploratory trip to Saratoga Springs was feasible. Prescott, her boss, was at his cabin in the Berkshires near his son, Edward. She didn't know when he would return to the city, but he wouldn't mind what she did on her own time.

A single woman in Saratoga, even a forty-year-old widow like herself, would feel awkward by herself as a private investigator. At least at the start, she would need a companion. Fortunately, Harry Miller, her fellow investigator in Prescott's firm, also had vacation time and might be willing to join her.

Miller's home was a room in a boardinghouse on Irving Place near the Prescott office. With a compliant smile, his landlady showed her into a small parlor and left to call him. She knew that Pamela and Miller worked together solving crimes, a legal but disreputable business.

He entered the parlor in rumpled clothes and glassy eyes.

“Harry! Have you been studying?” Pamela put a teasing reproach in her voice. He devoted nearly every free hour to his law books and new investigative techniques.

“I confess to the crime. What brings you here?”

She explained Francesca Ricci's predicament, then showed a sketch of the girl. “Would you help me investigate her situation in Saratoga Springs? I apologize for this short notice.”

He stared at the portrait. “She's a beautiful young woman. When did you learn to sketch?”

“In school,” she replied. “I sketched scenes when I traveled abroad and also portraits for friends. I stopped when Jack died and my life fell apart. Recently, Francesca encouraged me to take it up again. She wanted a portrait of herself to give to her mother.”

“That speaks well of her. She sounds like a good daughter and might be unjustly accused.”

He hesitated, apparently torn between his precious hours of study and this opportunity to save a person from a fate he himself had once suffered. His years in Sing Sing left raw wounds in his spirit.

Finally, he said, “We'll take the first train tomorrow to Saratoga Springs, speak to Francesca, and assess her situation. Charged with murdering a rich man, you say? Clearing her won't be easy.”

 

In the coach to Grand Central Station the next day, Harry asked, “Is your ward Francesca Ricci a likely murderer?”

“I doubt it. She's sixteen, poor, and foolish at times, but she's not violent. Her father died in an accident at a construction site shortly after her birth. Poverty and illness overwhelmed his widow, and she couldn't give Francesca a proper upbringing. Still, she grew up to be a bright, musical, and beautiful girl.”

“Any criminal inclinations?”

“A few. She often skipped school to sing for pennies on the street and to indulge in petty shoplifting. Several months ago, Macy's detective caught her stealing a bracelet and handed her over to the police. I managed to save her from prison, but the arrest went into her record. A court placed her in my custody with the warning that if she failed to reform, she would be sent to a house of detention.”

“Does she take that warning seriously?”

“I believe she does. Some of her friends have gone to prison, so she knows what it's like. She has told me that she detests the police for their roughness and disrespect toward her and other Italians.”

Harry grimaced. “So, what's new?”

“I must admit she might have provoked them. Since she moved into my apartment, her behavior has improved, especially her attendance at school and her grade reports. I tutor her. We sing Italian songs together and she sings in church. So, when she had an opportunity to work at the Grand Union Hotel for the summer, I recommended her to the management.”

A skeptic through training and experience, Harry shook his head. “Nonetheless, we can't declare that she's innocent of this crime. Before living with you, she seemed vain and undisciplined, even willful. True, you've straightened her out. But, in Saratoga, she might have fallen back into her old ways and robbed Crake, then impulsively killed him to escape going to prison.”

Pamela inwardly shuddered. Harry could be right. Under certain circumstances, anyone could fall from grace. Nonetheless, she would trust her own reading of Francesca's character and rely on the law's presumption of innocence.

As they boarded the train for Saratoga Springs, Pamela remarked to Harry, “I'm anxious about this trip. We'll have to contact Francesca promptly. She's virtually alone in that bustling town—the journalist Nellie Bly calls it Sin City.”

“What's worse,” Harry added, “the hotel will want a quick, simple resolution of the case. The police will hold her previous poverty and delinquency against her, and will pressure the girl to confess. She might soon face the prospect of years in a state prison—or worse.”

Before getting involved in Francesca's predicament, Pamela would have liked to speak to Prescott, her boss. Unfortunately, she could reach him at his Berkshire cabin only in an emergency.

As the train pulled out of the station, Pamela asked Harry, “What would Prescott think of our trip?”

Harry reflected thoughtfully for a moment. “He'd approve of our good intentions but warn us to be realistic. Francesca's arrest in Saratoga Springs wouldn't greatly surprise him. At the time of her arrest at Macy's he doubted that she would change her bad habits.”

Pamela shook her head. “He might also fault my judgment in taking on responsibility for the girl. This investigation will have to win his approval and support.”

 

During the ride north along the Hudson River, Pamela glanced sideways at her companion. He had fallen silent and looked sad, more than usual.

“What's the matter, Harry?” she asked gently.

“My son William will be confirmed at church on Sunday. I'm not invited.” His lips seemed to quiver.

She encouraged him with a sympathetic smile.

“My ex-wife poisons the boy's mind against me. He calls me a jailbird. That's hard to take.” Miller stared out the window.

Pamela was aware that the NYPD had dismissed Harry for protesting against the police cover-up of a murder involving Tammany Hall, the city's Democratic organization. Harry was then falsely charged with trying to extort money from the organization. Wrongly convicted, he served four years in Sing Sing. His wife left him, taking their two children with her.

Pamela reassured him. “As your son grows older, Harry, he'll think for himself. Then he'll learn the truth and be proud of your integrity and achievements. Prescott says you're the best detective in the city.”

Harry smiled wryly, leaned back, and closed his eyes. The train rumbled on.

 

At noon, they arrived in Saratoga Springs' busy D&H railroad station. Pamela and Harry engaged a carriage for a short ride to the Grand Union Hotel. At the last minute, Prescott's clerk had reserved adjoining rooms for them, though it was near the height of the tourist season and the hotel claimed to be fully booked.

From the sidewalk on Broadway, his eyes wide and arms akimbo, Harry looked up at the giant, six-story brick building. A three-story porch girded it, offering a shaded stage for hundreds of guests sitting in rocking chairs or walking about. A huge American flag flew over the central tower.

“Have you been here before?” he asked Pamela.

“Several years ago my husband and I stayed for a month on three occasions. He maintained it was the largest, finest hotel in the world. More big business deals were struck in the porch's rocking chairs than in many Wall Street offices. While he smoked a cigar and talked finance on the porch, I listened to the Boston Symphony Orchestra in the garden, or watched the women's fashion parade on Broadway, or walked with my daughter, Julia, in Congress Park. I feel nostalgic already.”

After claiming their rooms, they hastened to the town jail to speak to Francesca Ricci. The officer on duty studied their credentials, glanced skeptically at Pamela, and looked up at a clock on the wall. “I'm short-handed and can't leave the desk. Come back in an hour. The bitch will still be here.”

Pamela sensed that Francesca wasn't a model prisoner. Nonetheless, the officer was obnoxious. “We'll wait.”

He sighed impatiently, but after a few minutes he called a guard and told the visitors curtly, “Follow him.”

Francesca was locked in a cell with three females awaiting arraignment. “Prostitutes,” the guard said. He moved Francesca to a small, bare, grimy room with a battered table and a few wooden chairs.

Pamela sat at the table facing a sullen Francesca in handcuffs. Harry stood off to one side. The guard lounged against the wall near the door and picked his teeth. Francesca glared at him and banged the cuffs on the table. He tried to appear indifferent to her taunting, but his eyes smoldered with contempt and irritation.

“Are you well treated?” asked Pamela.

Francesca shrugged. “They don't beat me.”

“Did you steal jewelry from Mrs. Crake or kill her husband?”

“No.”

Pamela realized that the girl would not speak freely while the guard was listening. So she asked him, “Could you let us talk privately?”

He frowned, but he left the room. The girl made a gesture to his departing back that Pamela suspected was a nasty Italian insult.

“Tell me, Francesca, what happened that night?”

“When Mr. and Mrs. Crake went to the concert, I aired their rooms as usual. Then I returned to my room. Late that night, as I was reading in bed, a big, fat police detective and Mr. Winn, the hotel detective, came to my door. The officer questioned me, searched the room, and found Mrs. Crake's bracelet in my mattress. He said she had reported it missing. I said it was a gift from Captain Crake. The officer said I was lying and took me to jail.”

“Why would Crake give you his wife's bracelet? That sounds farfetched.”

Francesca reflected for a moment, the effort creasing her brow. “It's strange, but it's true. I often sang for him. That afternoon, he handed me the bracelet. I told him I couldn't take it. He looked angry and insisted. I was afraid he would hurt me. He was old and sick but still a big, strong man. I was confused. I couldn't sell it in a pawnshop. Even a dishonest dealer might turn me over to the police. So I hid the bracelet until I could figure out what to do with it.”

“Isn't it odd that he'd give away his wife's bracelet without asking her?”

“That's what I thought,” Francesca replied. “Frankly, I think he was angry at her. They say he gave her the bracelet a month ago to make up after a quarrel. It's engraved
RC.
There's talk among the maids that Mrs. Crake is carrying on an affair with Mr. Shaw. If I'd given the bracelet back to her against his wishes, I might have found myself in the middle of a family fight.”

Harry turned to Pamela. “By taking the bracelet away without asking his wife, Crake might have intended to punish her infidelity. Giving the bracelet to a chambermaid added insult to the injury.”

Pamela added, “If Crake's wife found out about the bracelet and later killed him, she could use it to implicate Francesca, a convenient scapegoat.”

“That's plausible,” Harry agreed. “Or, the police detective could have suspected Francesca simply because she was Crake's chambermaid. By chance he might have found the bracelet in a routine search of her room. Crake's killer could also share the detective's preconception of chambermaids. He or she might know Francesca and found a way to steer the investigation toward her.”