A Deadly Affection (10 page)

Jangling her key ring, the matron led me to a cell with the number two inscribed in its arched lintel. The brick enclosure was so narrow she had to stand partially sideways as she turned the key in the lock. “You've got ten minutes until the wagon gets here,” she advised me, pulling open the door.

I peered past her into a dim cell lit by a single incandescent globe. Two wire-strung bunks were attached to the wall on the left, one over the other. The top one was folded up flush against the bricks, the bottom one suspended over the concrete floor by chains at its corners. Eliza sat on the edge of the open bunk, staring up at me. The matron's hand pressed me forward and the door slammed shut. I heard the key grate in the lock, and then the matron's footsteps receded down the courtyard.

Eliza rose from the bunk, hugging herself, her eyes wide with fright. A hundred uneasy questions had been circling in my mind, awaiting her explication. But as she stood there shivering before me, the first thing that rose to my lips was “Are you cold?”

“Oh, Doctor…” she wailed, rushing toward me with outstretched arms.

I held her as she started to cry, deep sobs that welled up one after another, and seemed as though they might go on forever. Finally, she raised her head and wiped her face with her hands. “I was afraid you'd think I'd done it,” she said between stuttering intakes of breath.

“I didn't know what to think, Eliza,” I replied, stepping back from her. “I still don't.”

“I didn't kill him, I swear! If you'd seen what he looked like…” She stopped as a shudder rocked through her. “I could never do that to anyone.”

If this was an act, it was a bravura performance. I scrutinized her face for telltale signs of dissembling, but for the life of me, I couldn't find any. “Why don't we sit down, and you can tell me exactly what happened.” I stepped around a puddle that was snaking across the floor from the toilet in the corner, guiding her back to the open bunk. “We don't have much time,” I said as we sat down, “so you need to tell me as quickly and clearly as you can everything that you remember.”

“All right, I'll try.” She paused to collect her thoughts, then began, “I got there early, before office hours, so that I could talk to the doctor without being disturbed. He answered the door when I knocked. He said he'd be with me in just a few minutes and asked me to wait in the examining room. So I waited, and the minute he came in, I asked him.”

“Asked him what?”

“Where Joy was. I wanted to ask him right away so I wouldn't lose my nerve.”

“You mean you actually talked with him in the examining room? That wasn't in the detective's notes.”

She bit her lip. “I didn't think I should tell the police about Joy. I had promised Dr. Hauptfuhrer never to tell, and there didn't seem any reason for them to know.”

“So instead,” I said, recalling my conversation with Detective Maloney, “you told them you went to ask the doctor for a prescription.”

“I really did need a new prescription, for my headache powders. I was going to ask him for it when we were done.”

She was clearly eager for me to believe that she was telling the truth, and so far, I saw no reason to think that she wasn't. As Professor Mayhew had pointed out, however, what Eliza considered the truth wasn't necessarily rooted in reality. “How did the doctor react when you asked him where Joy was? Did he seem…surprised?”

“No, not surprised. I had telephoned him the day before to tell him I wanted to talk about her, so he was expecting it. But I can't say he was very pleased.”

“What did he say, exactly?”

She frowned. “He said it would be best for everyone concerned, especially Joy, if we left what happened in the past.”

That didn't sound like someone confronting a fantasy, I thought. “And how did you respond?”

“Well, I didn't want to do anything to hurt Joy. But I couldn't see any harm in just knowing where she was. So I promised that if he told me where she lived, I wouldn't try to talk to her. I'd only look at her, without her even knowing. But he said…” She hesitated, color rising in her cheeks. “He said he couldn't be sure I'd keep my word.”

So Joy wasn't just some hysterical concoction, I concluded. But that meant that Eliza had a real reason for resenting the doctor. Had that resentment kindled a violent assault when Hauptfuhrer refused her request? “And how did that make you feel?” I asked, watching her closely.

“I felt…ashamed, I suppose, the way he said it. Embarrassed for even asking. But then I remembered what you'd said, about how I had a right to know, and that made me feel stronger, somehow. So I looked him right in the eye and told him that she was my daughter and that if he didn't tell me where she was and give me some sort of proof that what he told me was true, I'd go to the police and let them know he'd taken her without my say-so.” She smiled crookedly. “I don't think I would have dared to, really, but I suppose it must have frightened him, because after a minute, he agreed.”

I sat back, making the bunk bed creak. “He agreed?”

She nodded.

I'd considered half a dozen other scenarios, but this one had never occurred to me. I stared at her, wanting it to be true, while she gazed steadily back at me. “And then?”

She shrugged. “And then he went to get me proof.”

“What kind of proof?”

“Well, I don't know, because he never returned.”

“All right, let's back up a bit,” I said, racing to put these new pieces into place. “Where exactly did he say he was going to get this proof?”

“He didn't say. He just told me to wait while he went to get it. Then he went through the connecting door into his office and closed it behind him.”

“You didn't go after him?”

“No! Although I was so excited, I could hardly sit still. I kept thinking how wonderful it was going to be to see Joy again, even if I could only watch her from a distance. But then I heard the doctor shout…”

“He shouted? You mean he called something out?”

“It was more of a cry, really, like…” She imitated a startled yelp. “And then there were bumping noises, and a minute later, a door slammed.”

“Which door?”

“I'm not sure, but I think it must have been the one that led from his office into the hallway. The noise came from that direction.”

For the first time since her arrest, I felt the stirring of hope. “What did you do then?”

“Well, at first I was too frightened to move. When it was quiet again, I called out his name, but he didn't answer. So finally, after another minute or so, I got up and opened the door, and that's…that's when I saw him.”

“What did you see, Eliza?”

She swallowed. “He was lying on his back on the floor, all covered in blood. There was an awful gurgling noise coming from his throat, and the blood was just…spurting up, out of his neck.” Her hand rose unconsciously to her own neck. “I didn't want to go any closer, but I thought there might be something I could do to help, so I made myself walk over to him. At first, I thought he was trying to say something, but when I bent down to listen, I realized it was just…dying noise, I suppose. Finally it stopped, and he was still.” She drew a breath. “Then his daughter came in—the one who answers the door during office hours. I tried to talk to her, but she just backed up and ran out of the room. I wasn't sure what to do then, so I waited, thinking she'd return. And then a few minutes later, the patrolman arrived.”

I listened with mounting excitement. If she could be believed, then the facts of the case as presented by Detective Maloney took on a very different light. The open file drawer, for instance—Detective Maloney had assumed the doctor was filing unrelated paperwork when he was attacked, but he might just as well have been retrieving Eliza's proof from that drawer, while she waited innocently in the adjoining room. And then there was the blood on Eliza's gloves and skirt. A severed carotid artery could spurt blood a distance of several feet; if the doctor's artery was still pumping when Eliza stooped beside him, as she had suggested, she most certainly would have been splattered. The fact that she had remained at the crime scene instead of running away, moreover, suggested not culpability but only a desire to help.

“Is it true that you screamed when you saw the doctor?” I asked her. “The detective on the case told me Miss Hauptfuhrer came downstairs because she heard you through the heat vents.”

“Why, yes, I suppose I did,” she said a bit sheepishly. “It was just such a shock, seeing him there on the floor.”

“You needn't apologize. It was a perfectly natural thing to do.” Surely, I thought, if Detective Maloney heard the full account that Eliza had just given me, he would realize that they'd arrested the wrong person. “You have to tell the police what you heard,” I told her. “Once they know that there was someone else in there with the doctor, they'll have to let you go and start looking for the real murderer.”

“But I already did,” she said in surprise.

“You told them about the shout? And the door slamming?”

“I told the patrolman as soon as he arrived.”

I gritted my teeth. Detective Maloney had not bothered to convey this critical information, to me or to the magistrate. It was beginning to seem as though he'd closed his mind to the possibility of Eliza's innocence, long before all the evidence was in. What evidence he had considered, he seemed ready to distort in the interest of wrapping up his case. I'd seen what he did with the little I revealed about Eliza's emotional state. He had also suggested, to me at least, that her fingerprints were on the sword, which was apparently untrue. I remembered his hesitation when I asked him what had brought Miss Hauptfuhrer downstairs. He clearly hadn't wanted to tell me, no doubt because it didn't mesh with his version of events.

“Do you think I should have told them about Joy?” Eliza asked.

It was a good question. If the police knew that Eliza was trying to discover her daughter's whereabouts, they might conclude she had no reason to harm Hauptfuhrer, who was the only person who could tell her. But they might just as well spin out a sensational scenario featuring Eliza as a vengeful mother righting a long-ago wrong. In light of Maloney's conduct thus far, I had little reason to expect the former. Nor, in light of his deception, was I inclined to fulfill my promise to obtain Eliza's permission to tell him all that I knew.

“What I think,” I told her, “is that you need a good lawyer. Not that dreadful man who foisted himself on you in the courtroom. I mean a really good attorney who's had some experience with…cases like this.” There was no reason, I had decided, to let Mrs. Braun keep me from doing what I was sure was in Eliza's interest, no matter how much she might blame me for what had happened. “I could ask around and get some names, if you like.”

“All right, if you think that's best.”

I smiled, touched but also daunted by her trust in me.

The matron reappeared at the door, jangling her keys. “The wagon's here,” she announced.

Eliza shrank back on the bunk as the key grated in the lock.

I took her cold hand in mine. “Try not to be afraid,” I said, giving it a squeeze.

The door swung open, and I rose to go. Eliza, however, remained seated, clinging to my hand.

“It's going to be all right,” I said. “We'll get to the bottom of this somehow.”

I cringed as the matron shackled her wrists, then followed helplessly as she was handed over to Officer Callahan at the gate and led to the front of the jail, where the wagon that would take her to the city prison was backing through the vehicle entrance. I watched Callahan load her into the wagon with four other women, feeling the weight of her trust on my shoulders. Though I would do everything in my power to help, I feared it wouldn't be enough. I was out of my element, my medical school honors and advanced training of no use in navigating the city's criminal justice machinery. Finding her a better lawyer would be a good first step, but I didn't know how much he'd be able to accomplish without evidence corroborating Eliza's story.

What we needed, I thought as the wagon drove off, was someone with influence. Someone who could use his connections to stall Maloney's steamroller tactics and give us time to uncover the truth. Unfortunately, the only person I knew who might fit that description was the last person I'd choose to ask for help. He'd gotten those boys off, however, and the young prostitute. Maybe he could help Eliza too. I was going to have to swallow my pride and ask him, for her sake.

I followed the wagon out to the street, then went back in the side door and up the staircase to the police court. At the first break in the proceedings, I leaned over the rail and hailed the roundsman. “Can you tell me where I might find Simon Shaw?” I asked him.

“This time of day?” He scratched his head. “I'd say your best bet would be at his saloon, on Eighty-Fourth and Second.”

“He owns a saloon?”

“Well, sure, and more than one,” he said, as if this were common knowledge. “But the Isle of Plenty is where you're most likely to find him. That's where he takes care of business.”

I would have liked to ask what kind of business, but before I could do so, he had turned away to call the next case. And so I left the police court behind and set out to discover the answer for myself.

I gazed across the street at the Isle of Plenty's curtained windows, shifting from foot to foot in the slush. So, Simon had become a saloonkeeper. I wouldn't have expected it of him; but then, I supposed I'd never known the real Simon Shaw. I caught a glimpse of the saloon's warmly lit interior as the door opened and a customer walked out, followed by strains of piano music. It looked like a decent enough place. Still, although my stockings were soaked through and my feet were numb from the cold, I was hesitant to cross.

I'd been nine years old when Katie brought young Simon back from the boat with his mother, our new parlor maid, and installed them both in the loft over the stable. Of course, Conrad and I weren't allowed to play with the hired help, but I was aware of the boy, as children are, and on the rare occasions when his mother brought him to the house, I found him to be an interesting, if reserved, young lad.

It was perhaps inevitable that when adolescence struck, Simon became the target of my youthful longings. My parents hadn't seemed to notice that I was becoming a woman. They'd provided me with tutors in French and astronomy, with dance lessons at Dodsworth's and tennis lessons in the park, but had done nothing at all to prepare me for the internal roilings of new womanhood, waiting for my debut year to launch me into society and its attendant, time-tested mating rituals. And so, in the lonely evening hours when Father locked himself in his study and Mama tended her flowers in the conservatory, I spent far too many hours staring vacantly over my needlepoint while fantasizing about a perfect beau. In time, with this paragon's hazy image fixed in my mind, I began to search for a flesh-and-blood counterpart among the boys of my acquaintance. The man of my dreams was made of more substantial stuff than the tongue-tied, sweaty-palmed boys at school or at Dodsworth's, however. I had almost despaired of finding him when, shortly after my sixteenth birthday, Simon was assigned to escort me on my morning rides, so that the coachman could drive Mama on her errands.

I had a chance then to study the nearly grown Simon up close, and what I saw set my heart to pattering. I found that he was courteous but never self-effacing. He didn't wear a hat, but if he had, I'm sure he would never have doffed it to me. Though he was unfailingly gentle with the horses, the maid told me he had once beaten an older boy to within an inch of his life for calling his mother a pretty piece of baggage. He had stopped school after the sixth grade to help earn his keep, but I knew he liked to read, and his opinions always seemed well reasoned. There was some mystery about his father, but I deduced that Mr. Shaw had abandoned the family shortly after Simon's birth, which perhaps explained his son's barely veiled—and to my mind, rather thrilling—disdain for authority.

His humble origins didn't deter me, for I was convinced that he would do great things. Once, after watching him brush Mama's mare to a sheen worthy of Madison Square Garden, I'd asked if he didn't mind taking care of other people's horses. He'd smiled and said, “I couldn't be sure they'd be properly cared for if I left it to someone else, now could I?” Thinking this a noble but somewhat backward way of looking at it, I'd asked him bluntly if he wouldn't rather be doing more important things. “I will, someday,” he'd explained. “But this is practice, see? You've got to take things one step at a time.”

I thought I understood him. And as I lay restlessly in my bed at night, I dreamed, absurdly, of some vague but contented future together. And I waited—for I didn't know what. An unidentified something, to resolve the unfamiliar tension building inside of me.

Thus came about the night of my disgrace. I remembered it with the clarity memory was wont to impose on things one would rather forget. I had gone down to the basement kitchen for something to eat before bed. It was Katie's night off, and Margaret, our cross-eyed new kitchen maid, was washing the servants' dishes. I had just sat down to the remains of a strawberry jam sponge cake when Margaret pulled on her coat and hat, hoisted a bucket of spotty apples from beneath the sink, and announced she was taking the apples to the stable.

Immediately, I saw my opportunity. Jumping up from the table, I grabbed Katie's old coat from its peg and offered to take the apples myself. Of course, Margaret had been quite shocked, protesting that it was her job to bring them on Katie's night off and that I'd catch my death going out in my thin chemise and robe, and asking what my mother would say, but I was not to be deterred. Stepping into the pair of old work boots that stood by the door, I pulled on the coat, snatched the bucket from Margaret's reluctant hand, and clumped past her into the hall and out the service door.

I could still remember how the nubby boot lining felt against my bare feet as I half ran, half shuffled around the corner and up the block to our stable. I shut the stable door behind me and paused in the lantern light, breathing in the scent of lamp oil and sweet hay. Kellogg neighed in greeting, and I hurried over to shush her with one of the apples. She had just chomped down on it with her big yellow teeth, spraying drops of juice through my open coat onto my chemise, when I heard footsteps on the loft stairs behind me.

Holding my breath, I counted the steady footfalls on the treads: six, seven, eight. The footsteps stopped, and I turned.

He was standing at the bottom of the stairs, cloaked in shadow. “Did they send you for the carriage?” he asked, his eyes gleaming like polished jet in the lamplight.

“No.”

He tilted his head, studying me in that unhurried way of his. “Well, you're not going for a ride. Not in that.”

“No,” I agreed, dizzy with excitement. “I'm not going for a ride.”

He waited, his dark eyes questioning.

Unable to explain even to myself why I'd come or what I expected, I simply smiled—an open, offering smile that I suppose anyone but a fool would have recognized. And Simon was no fool. He must have known, then, what I was feeling for him. And I, silly creature, seeing him smile in return, had been certain that he felt the same way.

• • •

But that had all been a long time ago, I reminded myself, shaking the memory off. I was no longer a dreamy, ignorant little girl. I could handle the likes of Simon Shaw. Pushing off the curb, I strode across the street, under the green canopy, and into the Isle of Plenty.

I stood inside the door for a moment as my eyes adjusted to the dim light. Through the warm haze of tobacco smoke I saw with relief that the saloon was indeed of the respectable sort, with rows of glassware stacked neatly on handsome wood shelving, and wall decorations limited to a simple gilt mirror, some boxing magazine covers, and an assortment of news clippings on the rear wall. A piano in the corner tinkled out “The Mansion of Aching Hearts,” just loud enough to be heard over the chatter of patrons two-deep at the bar, while a few families enjoyed an early supper of chowder and biscuits at the tables by the windows.

The bartender glanced up at my entrance with a welcoming smile. I started toward him, edging through two burly men at the counter. “I'm looking for Mr. Simon Shaw,” I told him. “I was told I might find him here.”

“He's in the back,” he said, jerking his thumb toward a door in the wall behind the piano.

I made my way across the room to the door he had indicated. I straightened my coat collar, adjusted my hat, and raised my hand to knock—then paused as I heard the sound of laughter and male voices on the other side. It would be hard enough talking to Simon alone. I didn't think I could manage it in front of an audience. I decided to wait for his visitors to leave.

While I waited, I scanned the newspaper clippings that covered the rear wall. Simon, I discovered, was in most of them. There was one with a sketch of “Alderman Simon Shaw” receiving a certificate of appreciation from the East Side Ladies' Guild for prohibiting horse-cars from a residential side street, and another showing “District Captain Simon Shaw” presenting a check to a newsboy shelter. In the bottom row, there was even a piece about “friend of the arts, Simon Shaw” introducing William Butler Yeats at a YMCA poetry reading.

So saloon-keeping was just a side business, I concluded. Simon, it seemed, had become a politician. A Tammany district captain, to be precise. That would explain why he'd been in court that morning; as district captain, he'd be responsible for keeping potential voters and their families out of jail. Of course, Eliza, being a woman, couldn't vote, but she did live in his district, and was part of a larger immigrant community whose support was vital to Tammany. Simon, as a member of that entrenched political machine, might be able to help her in ways that I couldn't even imagine.

I jumped upright as the door suddenly flew open. A fresh burst of laughter rolled out on a cloud of smoke, followed by a barrel-chested man with an expensive-looking coat slung over his arm. The man stopped short, looking me up and down.

“Well now, if this isn't the loveliest thing I've seen all day,” he exclaimed in a rolling Irish brogue. “Join me for a drink, dear lady, and I promise to take that frown off your pretty face.”

“I'm here to see Mr. Shaw,” I told him, keeping my frown firmly in place.

“I should have known,” he said with a sigh, managing to look both jolly and crestfallen at the same time. “Simon!” he shouted over his shoulder. “What do you mean by keeping this sweet young thing waiting?” He winked at me and stepped aside, gesturing me into the room.

I had little choice but to enter. Gripping the handles of my book bag, I stepped over the threshold into a windowless room that was hardly larger than a coat closet, thick with smoke and illuminated by a single overhead globe. Half a dozen men in shirtsleeves sat at a round table that took up most of the floor, nursing mugs of beer and smoldering cigars. Their conversation came to a halt as I walked in. From the way they were all staring, I gathered women didn't come in the place very often.

Simon was at the opposite side of the table, facing me. He was coatless and collarless like the others and wore his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows. He sat with his chair tipped back and one foot propped up on the table, holding a sweating mug on one thigh.

“Mr. Shaw,” I said, tipping my head.

He nodded back but made no move to get up.

“I'm sorry to intrude, but I have something rather urgent to discuss with you.”

Still, he said nothing but waited for me to go on.

“Perhaps you don't remember me,” I said. “I'm Genevieve Summerford. You used to…”

“I know who you are.”

The other men stirred, glancing from me to Simon. One of them pushed back his chair and started to his feet.

“It's all right, Joe. You can stay,” said Simon. “This shouldn't take long.”

I felt a blush creeping up my cheeks. “I was hoping we might speak in private.”

“Whatever you've got to say, you can say in front of my friends here.”

I took a deep breath. “Very well. I'm here on behalf of a woman in your district who has been accused of a murder she didn't commit.”

“The one in court this morning.”

“Why, yes,” I said in surprise. He had left before Eliza's hearing, and I hadn't expected him to be aware of her case. “I saw how you helped all those other people. I was hoping you could do something for her.”

His thumb tapped the rim of his beer glass. “They say she killed a doctor.”

“She didn't do it.”

“They never do, do they?”

I hadn't expected sarcasm. Whatever his other flaws, Simon had always been quick to defend an underdog. I remembered one time in particular when he'd stuffed a boy down a coal chute for dangling a helpless kitten from a sewer grate.

“I have good reason to believe she's innocent,” I told him. “But the detective in charge—a man named Maloney—won't even consider other suspects. He's convinced he already has the case wrapped up.”

“Sounds like Maloney,” snickered one of the men, lifting his mug to his lips. A brass-buttoned blue coat was hanging from the back of his chair. He was a policeman, I realized, and if the shield pinned to his coat was any clue, a policeman of some rank. I glanced around the table at the other men, wondering who they were and why they were drinking beer in Simon's private parlor.

“Why do you care what happens to her?” Simon asked me. “She's not fancy enough to be a friend of yours. What's it to you?”

The scorn in his voice made my cheeks burn even hotter. I told myself to let it pass, to focus on what I'd come for. But the anger and humiliation I'd thought I'd conquered long ago were bubbling up again inside me, and try as I might, I couldn't stop the memories from bubbling up with them. Suddenly, I was sixteen again, cowering in the armchair in my bedroom, listening in stricken silence as my father revealed the bitter truth.

“It's all through the servants' quarters!” he had shouted. “He's boasting that you let him fondle you! Couldn't you see that he was taking advantage?”

I, innocent still, had refused to believe it, insisting that Simon loved me and would never demean me in such a way, to which my father, who had never before spoken a bigoted word in my presence, retorted that the boy was arrogant Irish trash, unfit to utter my name. I'd known he must be convinced of what he was saying to be so upset, but still, I couldn't believe that it was true.

With Simon, I had felt…lovable. I couldn't bear to think it had all been a deception. And yet, I had never doubted my father before. He'd told me I must never speak to Simon again, and I, frightened and confused, had finally agreed. He'd calmed down then, saying he held himself partly responsible for failing to educate me properly and that that could be fixed, provided I hadn't “compromised” myself more seriously than he knew. It was a moment before his meaning sank in—but when it did, the shame was excruciating. Although I assured him quite truthfully that I hadn't, by now the kisses and touches I'd shared with Simon seemed quite wicked enough in themselves. Father let out his breath then and said that everything would be all right, but of course, I knew it wouldn't be. I had failed him, once again.