Shrouded In Thought (Gilded Age Mysteries Book 2) (18 page)

The sheriff had been studying her face as she read. His own expression was unreadable.

“Surely you don’t believe this, sheriff,” Evangeline exclaimed. “It must be a forgery! And this supposed evidence coming from Martin, of all people!”

“I wish I could go along with you on that, ma’am. But there’s other things as well. You see, I went back to the house and I searched Miss Serafina’s room.”

“She hasn’t been back there since the murder was committed.”

“Yes, I know that, ma’am. All the more reason to check and see if there was anything left behind.”

Dreading the response to her next question, Evangeline asked, “And was there?”

The sheriff continued to stare intently at Serafina. “Tucked under the mattress, I found a packet of powder. Do you use medicinal powders, Miss Serafina?”

The medium looked confused. “No, I do not. I have no packets of headache powders. No powders of any kind except for face powder, and that I keep in a little china box. I do not know what this could be.”

“Well, ma’am, I sent it on to Doctor Fowler to see if he could maybe help me figure out what it might be. But if I was to hazard a guess...”

Evangeline completed his thought. “You’d guess that the packet contains cyanide powder. Wouldn’t you, sheriff?”

“Yes, ma’am, that’d be the most likely answer.”

Evangeline sat very still, too much in shock to be outraged.

Serafina observed softly, “It is as I said, sheriff. I am suspected of killing Madame Euphemia.”

“Well, the facts surely don’t go in your favor, I’m sorry to say. If you knew about this letter that Miz Allworthy was going to send, then there’s your motive. If the packet does contain poison, why that’s the means, and you were the only one in the room with Miz Allworthy when she died. That’s the opportunity.”

Evangeline broke in. “But, sheriff, is it at all likely that Mrs. Allworthy would have been calmly sipping tea with a woman she considered a charlatan?”

Weston, unruffled by the distress his words had caused, merely rubbed his chin. “It’s like Miz Allworthy said in the letter. She just had her suspicions. Didn’t have any proof so maybe she just wanted to part company with Miss Serafina on good terms. To get her out of the house before blowing the whole thing sky high.”

“It’s a plausible theory, but I fear not a just one.” Evangeline’s tone was bitter.

“I’m not saying I’m convinced of anything one way or another, Miss Evangeline. I just wanted you to see how things stand with all this new evidence Mr. Allworthy so kindly brought to my attention.”

Evangeline shot a quick glance in the sheriff’s direction to see if she could detect in his expression a trace of the sarcasm his words suggested. His face was still a mild-mannered mask.

“He’s done a proper job of it, hasn’t he,” Evangeline muttered under her breath.

“Who’s that, ma’am?”

“Never mind, sheriff. I was just thinking out loud again.”

Weston gave her a long, appraising look with eyes that were remarkably keen in a face so tired. “So you see how it is, ma’am.”

“Yes, sheriff, I do indeed see how it is.”

“I’m afraid Miss Serafina will have to bide here for a bit until we find out what was in the packet.”

Evangeline looked in dismay at the back room with its iron bars. “But, sheriff, this is no place for a lady. The lack of privacy...”

The sheriff stood up and smiled reassuringly. “Don’t you worry, Miss Evangeline. I’ve asked Miz Weston to help me out with this... uh... situation. She’ll be coming by soon. We’ll hang a curtain in front of the cell and she’ll be here to keep Miss Serafina company. For common decency’s sake.”

“Thank you, sheriff. That was most thoughtful of you.”

Rummaging through his desk drawer once more, the sheriff reached in and found a large rusty key which he used to unlock the cell and deposit his unfortunate guest inside.

Serafina walked meekly behind the metal grille, a wan birdlike creature dwarfed by her surroundings. She looked around plaintively. “Such heavy walls and big iron bars. All to keep little me inside.”

Evangeline reached through the grate and touched her hand. “I’ll send your maid Fannie round with more clothes for you. This could take a while to sort out. Do you have a lawyer?”

Serafina appeared puzzled. “Why should I need a lawyer? I have done nothing.”

“My dear, innocence is the poorest shield of all under circumstances such as these. I’m sure I can get Freddie’s uncle to help. And in the meantime, I’ll move heaven and earth to get you out of here.”

“You see, it is as I told you in my dream.” Serafina smiled weakly. “You will find a way out.”

Evangeline looked askance at the medium. “I hope your confidence in me isn’t misplaced.”

The sheriff put a friendly hand on Evangeline’s arm to escort her out. “I truly wish you luck, ma’am. A body doesn’t live as many years as I’ve done without learning a few things about human nature along the way.” He let Evangeline infer what his own suspicions were in the silence that followed as they walked out the door.

The sheriff stood outside with her for a few moments, looking speculatively off in the direction of the lakefront. “Don’t know what I’ll do with the boys from the Reilly Club if they decide to cut up rough tonight. Probably have to handcuff ‘em to a lamp post and let ‘em sleep it off under the stars.”

“I’m sure the night air will exert a most salubrious effect in awakening their moral character.” Evangeline turned to walk off down the darkening street. “Good night to you, sheriff. And thank you,” she added softly.

***

Upon returning home, she went directly in search of Jack. She found him in the coach house polishing the brass carriage lanterns.

“Everything all right, Miss Engie?” His question sounded almost too casual.

“No, Jack. Far from it. I’ll have to curtail my duties at Mast House and
Pullman
. A more pressing matter requires my immediate attention. I’d like you to take the early train back to the city tomorrow.”

The caretaker looked up in surprise.

“I want you to get things in order at the townhouse. I’ll be staying there for the next week or two.”

Jack said nothing for a moment, continuing to polish industriously. When he finally spoke, his observation sounded almost nonchalant. “You’re going to hunt down Mrs. Allworthy’s killer, aren’t you, Miss Engie?”

“Yes, Jack, I am.” The lady folded her arms decisively.

The coachman grinned in amusement, his gold tooth flashing briefly in the lantern light. “Then I’d say the guilty party’s chances of surviving are about as good as a snowball’s in hell. You’ll pardon the expression, miss.”

Turning toward the door, Evangeline said over her shoulder, “Yes, I’d agree with your assessment, Jack. Get some rest. Tomorrow will be a very busy day.”

Chapter 16—Pressed Into Service

Once she had decided on a course of action, Evangeline wasted no time in executing her plan. Jack left shortly after dawn on the first morning train to the city. She followed him on the next. Instead of going to the townhouse, she went straight to the offices of the Gazette,
Chicago
’s most widely-read newspaper. The Gazette took up a four-story building on the corner of Dearborn and Madison in the heart of the downtown business district. Evangeline went there, at least in part, to perform an errand which was occasionally required but which she found highly distasteful nonetheless—admitting to Freddie that he had been right about something.

She had visited him a few times at his office since he made the transition from jurisprudence to journalism, so she had a vague idea of which cramped corner of the bullpen on the third floor he occupied. She braced herself for the usual zoolike sounds of hyena laughter, bird whistles, and cat calls, all of which passed for communication in some odd reporter language she had never quite grasped. Freddie had lately become proficient in the pig grunt variation of that language—a fact which distressed Evangeline greatly.

She recalled her last foray into this den of masculine iniquity. One particularly impudent youth had leered at her and asked, “Hey Sis, what’s your name?” to which she replied, “My friends call me Miss LeClair, but you can call me Ma’am!” The impudent youth thereupon being rendered speechless, Evangeline was left in possession of the field. She had no desire to draw blood today. She had come on a peaceful errand, but if the challenge was given, she wasn’t one to run from battle.

Thus steeled for the fray, she was quite surprised that, upon opening the door, no one seemed to take the slightest notice of her. There were at least twenty desks heaped with a mad array of copy and waste paper, typewriters, and men hunched over them hammering furiously at the keys. The sight of a woman in that bastion of adolescent good fellowship wasn’t greeted with as much stupefaction as a few months before. She found this change remarkable until she happened to glance toward the window where she saw a crisp little woman in a white shirtwaist and ascot tie hammering away at a typewriter keyboard along with the rest. It would seem the management of the Gazette had finally bitten the bullet. Since the Daily Courier and the Trans-Ocean had both hired female reporters, another sacred bull was in its death throes.

Evangeline jumped when a telephone rang on the desk near where she stood. As if in sympathy, three others began to jangle all at the same time from different points around the room while men scurried one way and another to silence the peevish summons.

Thankful for the diversion, she wove her way unnoticed between the desks until she came to the corner at the opposite end of the room where, she recalled, Freddie lurked. The poor underling’s desk appeared about the size of the student desks Evangeline saw in all the classrooms at Mast House. She fully expected that his chair would be bolted to the floor, but it moved backward when she pushed it away from the desk.

He wasn’t there. She was in the process of writing him a note to call her at her townhouse when her nostrils became irritated by the reek of cigar smoke. Very cheap cigar smoke. Without even looking up to establish the source of the offensive aroma, she guessed the name of the perpetrator.

Keeping her eyes on the note she was writing, she asked, “Mr. Bill Mason, I presume?”

“Gad, Miss LeClair! Your powers of deduction are truly amazing!” The veteran newsman beamed at her. He had apparently been standing next to Freddie’s desk for several moments unannounced.

Evangeline finally looked up and greeted her friend’s unkempt and aromatic mentor with a rueful smile. “You needn’t praise my powers of deduction too highly, Mr. Mason. I fear your presence would be self-evident to anyone possessed of a normal olfactory sense.”

Mason blushed in embarrassment. “Oh, uh, truly sorry, ma’am. I do beg your pardon.” He ground out the cigar on a typewritten sheet of copy on Freddie’s desk. “Hmmm.” He viewed the charred streaks he had left on the page. “Well, it wasn’t too good anyhow. The boy’s going to have to rewrite that one for sure.”

He slipped the extinguished cigar back into his coat pocket. “No sense in wasting a perfectly good stogie.”

Evangeline decided to let her opinion of the quality of the stogie pass unarticulated. “Have you seen Junior?” She gestured toward Freddie’s vacant chair.

“I think I just saw him skedaddle into the editor’s office. He’s sure he’s onto a hot story about that society dame who just got poisoned up your way the day before yesterday. The way he’s been carrying on, you’d think it was the crime of the century. You wouldn’t happen to know what he’s babbling about, would you?”

Evangeline kept her response guarded. “I think I have a fairly good idea where his thoughts are tending.”

Mason’s journalistic instincts had become alerted. “Care to share any of it?”

“Not quite yet, Mr. Mason.”

The reporter laughed, an appreciative gleam in his eye. “Uh-oh. Whenever it’s just Freddie who’s off on a wild goose chase, I pay it no mind. Two weeks ago, he was sure he’d heard a rumor that Bathhouse Johnny Conklin was going to quit politics and enter the theater as a ventriloquist. Freddie cooked up this scheme to start going through Conklin’s trash to see if he could find any wood shavings. You know, from the dummy. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings by telling him who I thought the dummy was. He couldn’t get me or anybody else to bite on that worm. But this is different. When you get involved, I kind of start to take things seriously. I can’t help remembering what happened the last time...”

Evangeline gave her best impression of demure propriety. “I’d hardly think that catching a killer once should create a pattern of expectation, Mr. Mason.”

The reporter shook his head. “As I recall, I lost the credit for a perfectly good story because I made you a promise, and I wouldn’t like to lose another opportunity because I was caught napping.”

“Your vigilance does you credit, sir. As does the fact that I can rely on you to keep your word. You are indeed a man of integrity, Mr. Mason.”

“By holding that opinion, Miss LeClair, you’re in the distinct minority. Ah, here comes the young rapscallion now.” Bill gestured toward the editor’s office door, from which Freddie had just emerged. “How now, Hal, what time of day is it, lad?” Bill had a penchant for quoting Shakespeare at the most irrelevant moments.

“Hal?” Freddie echoed in bewilderment.

“You’ve got a visitor, my boy. Not polite to keep a lady waiting.” Temporarily forgetting his own need to be polite, Mason had just fished the cigar of dubious quality out of his pocket and caught himself in the act of relighting it. “Oh nuts!” he cursed mildly and allowed said unlit cigar to remain perched on his lower lip. “Sorry, Miss LeClair. Can’t seem to help myself.”

Freddie threaded his way across the room to his own desk.

 
He seemed surprised to see his friend. “Engie, what are you doing here?”

Bill stood back silently, evidently hoping for some crumb of information to drop unheeded.

“Just an innocent social call, Freddie, that’s all.” Evangeline had no intention of alerting Mason’s instincts further.

Freddie looked at his friend as if she’d lost her mind. He was well aware that she never pursued any course of action without a purpose.

She grabbed his arm to forestall any more questions. “Can we go somewhere for a stroll? The air is so stuffy in here.”

“But, Engie, I’ve got mountains of work to do.” He picked up a sheet of paper from his desk. Unfortunately, he chose Bill’s makeshift ashtray to illustrate his point. “Hey, who did this?”

“Well, have to be going.” Mason backed away from the desk as if it were a bomb about to explode. “Always a pleasure, Miss LeClair.” He bent to kiss her hand.

Evangeline smiled, guessing the unasked question that remained. “Mr. Mason, I assure you when there’s anything to tell you’ll be the first to know.”

“What?” Freddie, even more perplexed, allowed Evangeline to steer him through the maze of desks and out the press-room door.

“We need to talk!” she told him. “But somewhere where the walls don’t have ears or cigars.”

“But... but...” Freddie objected weakly.

“This way!” Evangeline forged on toward the stairwell.

“Wait a minute, old girl. Wait a minute. I know the perfect spot.”

Freddie led Evangeline down to the ground floor and through the double doors to the print room. The roar of the presses rattled the walls, the floor, and the teeth of the room’s occupants. “How’s this?” He beamed proudly, waiting for her approbation.

“What?” she howled over the hammering of the nearest machine.

“I... said... isn’t this... better?”

Evangeline read Freddie’s lips because she couldn’t hear him. “No!” she thundered.

Sighing in exasperation, he took her by the arm and led her to the corner of the room nearest the windows and farthest away from the infernal din.

Her ears still ringing, she scowled at him as she tried to readjust her hat. The vibration from the machines had knocked it askew.

“Just trying to be of help.” He rolled his eyes heavenward in persecuted martyrdom.

She relented slightly. “Well, I suppose this will do. Is there anyone who could overhear us?”

“You mean hear us, don’t you? There’s nobody else around except for a few typesetters, and they’re over at the other end.”

“Good.” Evangeline launched into her story. “You’ve heard about Euphemia Allworthy, I suppose.”

“No thanks to you!” Freddie was off and running. “Why didn’t you try to send me word? I had to find out when the news was telephoned in from one of the suburban papers.”

“I rather had my hands full, having strolled onto the scene of the murder about fifteen minutes after it happened.”

“But that’s wonderful, Engie!” Freddie went instantly from accusatory to exuberant as he flipped open his ever-present notebook. “You can give me an eyewitness account of everything that happened!”

Evangeline shot a grim look at her friend before filling him in on the interrogation scene at the Allworthy villa. When she came to the end of her narration, she paused. “But then something even worse happened yesterday that kept me from contacting you.”

“Worse?” Freddie looked bemused. “What could be worse than a murder?”

“An innocent person framed for committing it, that’s what.” Evangeline then regaled her friend with an account of Serafina’s arrest.

“The swine,” Freddie said between clenched teeth. “Setting her up to take the fall for him or for Roland!”

“Well, we’re in agreement on that point. Now all we have to figure out is how to make one of them confess and clear Serafina.”

“I’d bet anything that Bayne is involved in this somehow.”

“Yes, Freddie, I’d agree with you on that point as well.” Evangeline spoke in a whisper that would have been barely audible in a quiet room. Her words were fairly drowned in the echo of the presses.

“What was that, Engie? I didn’t hear you.” Freddie had become proficient at lip-reading above the racket, but apparently he just wanted to hear her say it again.

“You were right.” She enunciated for his benefit in clipped and very loud syllables. “There! Are you happy now? I freely admit it. Your instincts about the nefarious Mr. Bayne proved to be correct.”

“Engie, don’t speak. I beg you. Don’t say another word! I just want to savor this moment.” Freddie sighed and closed his eyes in deep satisfaction.

The lady allowed him all of twenty seconds to revel in his victory. “Are you through?”

“No, but you may continue.” A smirk still lingered on his face.

Ignoring his irritating expression, Evangeline forged ahead. “I kept trying to find a motive for Martin’s behavior. After all, he’s not in any financial difficulties. He had free access to Euphemia’s fortune before. So inheritance, in and of itself, wouldn’t be reason enough to want to kill her. And then I started thinking about the mysterious Mr. Bayne.”

“Who shows up shortly after Nora Johnson is murdered.” Freddie looked at his friend impishly. “And, oh, by the way, is there anything you’d care to contradict in my last statement?”

She returned a baleful glare. “Really, I’d think a person would be content with one concession per day.”

“Engie, come on,” he wheedled.

“Very well! I see there’ll be no living with you after this!” She sighed and took a deep breath. “Yes, all right, I agree that Nora Johnson was murdered. Once again, your theory was correct. Can we proceed now?”

“Of course.” He waved her magnanimously to continue.

“As I was saying, the mysterious Mr. Bayne makes his appearance shortly after Nora Johnson’s murder and claims to be a long-lost friend of Martin’s. Martin gives him a job in his company with a big title and a paycheck to match. The obvious conclusion is that Bayne is blackmailing Martin because he possesses some evidence implicating Martin in Nora’s death.”

“Implicating him!” Freddie cried in disbelief. “He’s the one who killed her!”

“On that point, we do not agree. What was his motive? He’s far too proper to get involved in a secret affair. Roland seems the more likely culprit.”