The Detective's Dilemma (20 page)

He wanted to walk over to Julianna, but when he glanced at her chair, it was empty.

Harriet the maid noticed his gaze. “She and one of Mr. Sawyer’s lawyers left, sir. He said something about helping her.”

Walker only nodded, unable to speak through the gut-churning disappointment that she hadn’t turned to him for help or even said good-bye. He’d go after her soon.

Mr. Winthrop now protested loudly that he’d been struck by some sort of brain fever and had said nonsensical things. His underlings tried to herd the crowd from the sitting room.

“Stop.” Mrs. Winthrop’s shrill voice cut through the babble. “I have to tell you all what I know. No, you will not stop me, Mr. Springfield.”

Apparently, she didn’t care that when she ruined her husband’s reputation she hurt herself as well, for she poured out the stories she’d told Walker, only this time to the eager ears of McMillan and others. She paused only to sip from a glass of water Sawyer brought her.

“A brave woman,” Walker muttered to Harriet.

“Yes, sir.” She beamed like a doting aunt at her employer—who was a couple of decades older than she.

One of Sawyer’s scholarly thugs stood near them, a man with thick wire-rimmed glasses and a perpetually furrowed forehead. “A stupid lady,” the clerk said to Walker. “When her husband falls, I suspect she will as well. She’s going to end up with no money, maybe not even this fancy roof over her head.”

Walker might have agreed once. He stood in his corner watching the lady who’d spent much of the day hunched and blubbering. She sat straight now, hands folded in her lap, and, though her voice wavered, she remained calm.

“I’d say she’s doing the right thing,” he said to the man, who rolled his eyes.

Sawyer watched Mrs. Winthrop with the same eager expression as the others. Walker decided not to pull Sawyer aside and ruin his fun. He spoke to the man with the wrinkled forehead and spectacles. “Tell Sawyer I’ll be by to see him tomorrow morning. He wants to upset the applecart, and I’ll push it over with him.”

“What do you mean?”

“Tell him Mr. Walker will deliver all the information about what went on with me and my pal Mr. Gregory. He can use whatever will be useful.”

The thought of spilling the truth and losing his old life made him feel a little sick, but that wasn’t anything new. He slipped out of the house as the doctor came in. No one noticed. He could do one more thing for Julianna.

After giving Danny a few more coins and a carriage ride to his usual spot near the
Tribune
, Walker ordered the hansom to the police station not far from the Winthrops’ house. The blue glass lamp cover that hung above the door had been shattered, so only a simple yellow gaslight flickered there. That proved the only jarring note to the fancy precinct house. The newly painted interior of the station was surprisingly neat and spacious, and the smell of turpentine nearly covered the usual reek of carbolic and unwashed drunkard. A yawning patrolman leaned on the wall next to the wooden benches set out for the public. He held a thick white mug, ignoring the gray-haired desk sergeant, who scolded him about hanging around the station.

“I’ll make sure the roundsman’ll come after you,” the sergeant warned the young cop before turning his small, squinting gaze to Walker, the only other person in the room. “Sir?” the sergeant asked.

Walker pulled out his badge. “I’m looking for a man in your cells, name of Brennan.”

“Brennan? Brennan?” the sergeant muttered as he ran his thick finger down the log book. “Nossir, not here, not anymore.”

At Walker’s request, he ambled off to check with the holding-cell guard, leaving the patrolman to watch over the empty room and clean his fingernails. The patrolman scratched his neck above his high collar when Walker asked about Brennan. “I don’t know nothing about it, Detective.”

“Did you hear about any kind of action today? One of the special boys?” That was code for Gregory’s men.

The patrolman shrugged and looked unconcerned. A moment later, he perked up. “Special boys? Don’t know them. But say, speaking of action today, wasn’t that a hell of a fistfight on Madison Avenue?”

“There’s always a hell of a fistfight somewhere.” Walker decided the officer was too new to know about the special boys doing their shadowy side jobs. Maybe he never would, and that thought cheered up Walker.

When the sergeant returned, the cop saluted Walker and took off to walk his beat.

Brennan had been released, and that was all the desk sergeant knew.

Hoping for more gossip, and maybe to clear up the one real case he worked on, Walker leaned against the scuffed desk while the sergeant complained about working night duty, which was “all boredom and not nearly enough alarms.”

Walker tried to pry out information about the Winthrop’s call to have Brennan arrested, but the sergeant hadn’t been on duty.

The old man heaved a great sigh and, after asking about Walker’s old precinct, predicted a dull night with a few drunkards and nothing more. Walker half listened and realized his own complaints were almost as silly: he regretted not being able to act the hero for Julianna. He’d imagined her kiss of gratitude.

Eventually, Walker said good night to the morose sergeant and made his way back to his cold-water flat above a bakery.

In the near dark lit only by a kerosene lamp, he undressed and reached for a bottle and glass, a crystal tumbler he’d taken from his parents’ house a month before they’d sold everything of value. He’d come by to drop off some of his earnings, and they insisted he take something in return, as if he were some sort of tradesman who must be paid off with the rest. He’d thought it generosity on their part. His brother informed him they didn’t like taking his money because they didn’t like its source—his pay as a cop.

As he sipped the whisky, he decided to avoid the past and considered the long day he’d just had, and especially Julianna—her laugh and her body and her tart manner. Something loosened inside him—and he realized he smiled. His mouth wasn’t used to that sensation, and that thought made the smile grow wider.

Tomorrow, he’d visit Sawyer again. He’d tell him and the lawyers whatever they wanted. And if it ended his life as a cop, well, that no longer seemed the end of the world. He could always get a job as a stable hand, a bricklayer, a knife sharpener, a clerk in a bank, a tinker, a tailor… And then he might visit his father. It had been more than a year, and he realized he hadn’t wanted to face the old man during the time he’d been one of Gregory’s boys, a tool of corrupt men.

He put down the tumbler without finishing his drink. In the morning, he’d see Sawyer and his father, and then, to reward himself for the task of facing them, he’d visit Julianna. Or maybe he’d do it the other way around. She’d give him courage.

When Julianna returned to her house accompanied by Mr. Sawyer’s assistant, she found an anxious Isabelle. The nanny had been left standing alone in the park when Winthrop had Peter picked up and Brennan arrested.

Isabelle took Peter from her arms, and Julianna went back out the door with the assistant, Mr. Persky, a dour man with sideburns and a dry cough.

At the station, Mr. Persky insisted on slipping money to the sergeant, who gave him a wink and a nod and slipped off his high stool and sauntered through a door.

“That’s the sort of thing that Mr. Sawyer is trying to change. Bribery and corruption,” she said after the door closed behind the sergeant.

“That’s Sawyer’s problem. I want to get home and see my wife before she goes to bed,” the lawyer told her. “Do you want your servant released, or would you prefer he spent the night in jail?”

“Released, please.” She’d save her indignation for another day. She smiled at the still-scowling lawyer. “Thank you for your help.”

When he was led to the front of the police station, Brennan looked as weary as she felt. “I should have run faster,” he told her. “I’m so sorry.”

“No, no need to apologize. It is over now, and we can go home. Isabelle is waiting there for us.”

“I could have taken care of this on my own. I don’t know why Mrs. Walker insisted on accompanying me to the jail,” the lawyer told Brennan.

“Mrs. Walker?” Brennan gave Julianna a startled look but didn’t contradict the man, thank goodness. “I beg your pardon?”

The man felt the need to explain in a louder voice, “Outspoken women who think they need to take control in the world of masculine concerns are most unattractive.”

“Amen,” said the policeman at the desk.

Julianna made a hideous face at Brennan, who wore a stony expression of distaste but didn’t speak up. She wouldn’t either. She’d had worse said about her in her hearing, and she felt too weary for any more indignation.

Outside the police station, Persky hailed a hack and, after a brief farewell, left them to make their own way home.

Brennan insisted upon making them cups of coffee despite the late hour. They settled at the kitchen table. The now-stale bread still rested there. She absently picked up the crumbs and put them onto a plate. The one Caleb had used.

Brennan told her about his day that had gone as planned until about three, when a policeman had discovered the three of them, Brennan, Isabelle, and Peter, as they strolled through Central Park. “I’ll spare you a description of the jail cell,” he said gloomily. “But now you should tell me about your time with that man, please.”

So she told an abridged version of her long day, leaving out most of what went on in Mrs. Calder’s apartment, though her whole body tingled and grew hot as she thought about Caleb.

Brennan studied her with far too much interest, and when she was finished, remarked, “I’m not sure why you pretended to be married to that Detective Walker person.”

“I think it a sort of joke between Mr. Walker and Mr. Sawyer.” She had trouble meeting Brennan’s eye.

“Funny sort of a joke.” He cleared his throat and drummed the table, a sign that he was anxious.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“So you showed that man, Mr. Walker, the book. Does he have it?” he asked. His urgent manner explained why he didn’t want to wait until morning to talk.

She smiled at him, pulled the book from her pocket, and put it on the table.

He took the worn book carefully. When he opened it, he wore a look of relief and love she’d rarely seen in his face. Once again, she was reminded that her own relationship with James hadn’t been true love. The marriage she’d once considered absolutely fine had been an imitation. No, that was not fair to either of them or their marriage. A pale version of love, because it had been genuine.

This afternoon, she’d experienced passion, and now, looking at Brennan, she saw lasting love. She watched him reverently turn the pages, and part of her wished she’d destroyed the book while she could. Not to hurt Brennan—well, not entirely—but mostly to untangle him from loss.

“No one but Detective Walker and I know its contents,” she told him. “It wasn’t necessary to use it. Mrs. Winthrop was more than willing to speak of Mr. Winthrop’s ill treatment of James.”

He made a face of distaste, raising one of his fine eyebrows. “After all this time, Mrs. Winthrop regrets her inaction about Mr. James?”

Funny how he still called her husband, his dead love, by that formal name.

“Yes. I think she has been changed by the events of today,” Julianna said.

“No one can be changed by one day,” he said.

“You’re wrong about that,” she said, then wished she hadn’t.

He drummed the table again. “I wonder if you’re thinking about what has happened to you.”

He always had been too perceptive.

“Because you’re right—there was the day years ago when your own life was turned upside down.”

Ah, perhaps he wasn’t entirely perceptive after all. As usual, a shadow of guilt passed over his face as he mentioned the day that had ended with her betrothal to James. “Oh, that day, yes. Now, according to our ritual, I must mention Peter and how wonderful he is and how, if I hadn’t been forced into that marriage, I would never have had him,” she teased.

She laughed, because he looked horrified. “Do I look for reassurance that often?” he asked.

She patted his arm and rose from her chair. “No more than anyone else, I think.”

“Good night,” he called after her. “I’m so glad you’re all right, ma’am. And that you managed to stop the Winthrops’ persecution.”

“Not I,” she said. “Detective Walker and his friends.”

She slept long and hard and woke without the jangle of unease—for the first time in many weeks. Her legs ached from the walking and her heart felt rather light and she knew she’d dreamed of something pleasant, an unexpected treat, the first sign of spring. The echo of the dream included Caleb Walker’s kisses.

The sound of Peter’s chatter drifted up from below. She dressed quickly in one of her sensible gowns and went in search of her son—but not before Brennan stopped her and pointed out a front-page article about allegations charged against the powerful businessman Winthrop.

Julianna sang as she found Peter and spent a happy hour playing with him, building towers for him to knock down so they could both cheer and clap hands. Even the delivery of a note from Mr. Sawyer’s office, begging a visit from her, couldn’t upset her happy calm.