City for Ransom (15 page)

“As you should be. Drink up!”

After a moment of awkward silence, Ransom said with open palms, “Oh, I shouldn't've been so hard on you to begin with, really…I mean, when you look around…there're so many ahhh…unusual new methods and tech
niques, just as Christian says, and your magnetic healing is really mild by…say compared to—”

“Mysticism, séances, hypnotism, spiritualism—raising the dead at a cotillion party?”

“Balancing sieves on a fork, or divining by Quija board?”

She raised Tewes's glass in a gesture that said touché.

“I'm trying to say that you're almost within the realm of…” began Ransom. “That is to say at least close to…I mean at least scientific sounding…and something
natural
about magnetic fields. So, I'm just saying—”

“That you accept me as
somewhat
less than eccentric? Perhaps normal?” She laughed at this.

“What's so—”

“Funny? You might care to know I've never been called
normal
by anyone's standard.”

“Are you saying you've never been normal?”

“Normal…what is the norm, Inspector? If normal means staid, stodgy, keeping in one's place…I am afraid not.”

“Seldom does an officer of the law see normal, as I saw it today at your home.”

“At my home?”

“That sister of yours you use as maid, Jane, and your daughter, one who works your books. Both I'd characterize as normal as normal gets.”

“Normal is as normal does? I'm glad you approve, and that you found my…my Jane and Gabby so…presentable.”

He lifted his glass as if to the memory. “A pleasant, comely woman she is, your sister.”

“Not when in her ill-temper, I assure you.”

“She seems a woman of…of—”

“Yes, spit it out, man.”

“Of obvious good character. A woman apart.”

“Struck you as a woman of substance, did she?”

“Aye.”

“After all, she is my sister.”
Some detective
, she thought.

“And you, Doctor…so…so…”

“Different, say it, man! Different as night from day, indeed…I am quite
different.
”

Lifting the pitcher of room temperature rich red ale, Ransom poured Tewes's glass full again. This done, he asked, “How so? I mean…how do you mean, different?”

“Damn
different,
man! Friendly, fascinating, strange, odd, weird, gifted, bright, charming, delightful, intellectual, insightful, all of it.”

“Curt, abrupt, intense, too direct,” added Alastair.

She answered between sips, the taste of ale growing on her, “Don't leave out funny, hedonistic, artistic, expressive!”

“Expressive, yes, agreed!”

She pushed on. “Creative, self-absorbed, spirited, sincere, straightforward, lively, both patient and impatient, loyal, sad, depressed in turns…at times lonely,
waaay
too sensitive, sarcastic, can't keep my mouth shut when angry or irritated, or around stupidity—especially stupidity that costs me in time, energy, or money, and—”

“Like now?” he finally interrupted the flood of words.

She ignored this, continuing with “—and inhibited at times, fearful at times, as I know too damn much for my own good, but I don't trust anyone, which makes me distant.”

“And I suspect you are a challenge for any woman.”

“Do you see that too? It's me…in my own mind, I'm larger than life, despite my height.”

“Really? I could introduce you 'round to some women.”

“So that I can be like you—loud, obnoxious, a skirt-chaser?”

“You really have me wrong, sir.”

“I've misread you? You are actually curious, thoughtful, meditative—at least Christian says so.”

“Fenger says that?”

“Especially about medicine, the human body and the mind.”

He snickered. “Whatever helps me solve a crime. Strange that Christian's never said as much to me!”

She looked at him as if for the first time. “What started this conversation off?” She was beginning to feel the effects of the amaretto and ale mix in her system. “Ahhh, yes, well, I know no one who'd use ‘normal' in describing me, no. Would you?” Tewes stood, a bit tipsy, even as Alastair poured the phrenologist another glass of ale. Tewes declined another sip. “It is home for me. Have to look in on my little girl. Had liquor with Dr. Fenger, you see atop this.”

“Your Gabrielle is a beautiful young woman, Dr. Tewes, and we should have a toast to her at the very least.” Ransom held up another full ale to Tewes.

Determined, Jane gulped down the tribute to, as Ransom put it, “the fairest lass in all the city,” and she did so in manly fashion.

Unable to hold his liquor, Tewes had played into Alastair's plan too well, as he could not find the door out of Muldoon's. Muldoon and Ransom exchanged a look of knowing, and so Ransom must help Tewes home. The entire way—having to hold Tewes up. What at first he found disturbing soon became curiosity.
How is this fellow so slight?
He imagined lifting Tewes over his shoulder. It'd certainly make getting him home a simpler proposition as Ransom himself had a buzz on. But the sight of her father slung over Ransom's shoulder might set off Gabby with the gun.
And soft. The man's shoulders and arms soft and hardly a tincture of sweat.

A strange fellow indeed, he concluded as he rang the bell.

Gabrielle rushed out, gun in hand. “What've you done to him?”

“Afraid, young miss, he's sotted.”

“Drunk?”

“On ale. Do apologize. Hadn't the slightest inkling he was gone until…well, he was gone.”

“Bring the doctor inside, please.”

He threw Tewes over his shoulder, the doctor's pants leg revealing as small an ankle as he'd ever seen on a man. It made him think of the Bertillon method, the fact no two men
had the same measurements, and he wondered if he were to “take the measure” of this man, and send it to contacts at the Suréte in France, if he might not get a match to a wanted fugitive or fraud under another name.

Ransom always carried a tailor's measuring strip in his pocket. Normally, his subject was awake and frightened or beaten into complying with having his measurements taken. But he'd also performed it on a few with whom he'd struggled and knocked senseless, and he found measuring the unconscious a great deal faster and easier. Thirty seconds alone with Tewes now was all he required.

“Get him some water, and I'll get him into bed,” Ransom now barked orders at Gabby.

“I won't leave you alone with him under any circumstances.”

“I mean your father no harm, child! Now go! Get water or better yet, black coffee!”

Gabrielle waved the gun before his eyes. “All right, but you just lay him out on the bed, and don't touch him in any other way!”

“I've no desire to touch him in any way, child. Now, please as I say!”

She acquiesced, backing out the door, gun weighing down her hand like a pipe.

As soon as she disappeared, Ransom whipped out his measuring tape and gave Tewes the Bertillon once over, memorizing each figure in his head as he measured forehead, distance between eyes, nose to chin, eyes to chin. Circumference of neck; shoulder to shoulder. Chest. Again the sponginess of Tewes's body struck him. He then measured the waistline. The man had none! He noticed how the man's belt looped one and a half times around the waist. He hadn't time to contemplate this more, as he now measured length of leg from crotch to knee, then knee to ankle, finally tearing off his shoes to measuring foot size.

But he failed to finish as Gabrielle was returning; he pock
eted the unraveled tailor's tape. What'd alerted him to her quick return, he realized only when seeing her enter, was her gun clinking against the glass on the crowded tray she carried. She had a pot of coffee on the tray alongside the water. “I'd made coffee earlier,” she explained. “Father never stays out so late, ever.”

“And you were worried.”

“And rightly so, it appears.”

“He tells me that you knew the victim at the train station.” Fenger had told him this.

“I had only known him for a few days at Northwestern when we met quite by accident at the fair, you see. I was playing hooky from my studies. Gabby's eyes had filled with tears. “We were to meet at the fair again next eve…”

“He was quite taken with you, then?”

“He was sweet…smitten, I'm afraid.” She teared up and he offered her a handkerchief that she accepted.

“I had no idea your father couldn't, you know, hold his liquor. I do apologize.”

“I've never seen him this way, ever.”

“You take good care of your father. Admirable.”

“I do my best.”

“He is not always making wise decisions, I would hazard a guess.”

“Certainly not tonight! Going off with you! No…I mean, yes. He is not always showing the best judgment, but he is my father, and I…I love him dearly.”

“That much is obvious.” Ransom poured himself a cup of coffee and sipped at it before asking, “What about your aunt, his sister?”

“His sister?”

“Your aunt…who I met earlier?”

“Ahhh…Mrs. Ayers…Jane Francis.”

“You do not call her Auntie?”

“I've not known her long.”

“Ahhh…I see.”

“She's only recently joined us.”

“From France?”

“Ahhh…I believe by way of New York.”

All facts he could check later, he told himself. The young one seemed absolutely befuddled. She'd not gone near the gun in all this time. Perhaps she was getting used to Alastair. He could only hope. “It's a fine gun you carry about.”

“It is mother's,” she blurted out. “I mean…was my mother's. The…the only thing she bequeathed me.”

“Interesting heirloom then. But I was given to understand she died in labor, giving birth to you, so how was it she bequeathed you a gun? Or is that mere street talk, rumor I'm repeating?”

“She set it out in a letter in the event anything should happen to her during her pregnancy.”

“Ahhh…foresight she had, perhaps a premonition?”

“I am told she was sickly…always.”

“Difficult pregnancy?”

“Hard labor came as no surprise.”

“I see. Your father here, being a doctor…he must've known the risks…”

“Aye…I mean, I should think so, as he's a medical man.”

“But they had not consummated their wedding? He then had to legally adopt you, his own child is how I heard it.”

“No…common street talk is that, sir!”

Was Gabby embarrassed by this? Her clenched hands spoke of discomfort, perhaps a lie. He lifted the gun, and her allowing this felt like a new, fresh start between them. They smiled across at one another, the gun held up between them while Tewes mildly snored.

Ransom examined the gun for the missing cap that Tewes had mentioned. The firing pin was in place, and the cap in the caplock. Either Tewes failed to tell the truth about the gun, in an attempt to ease Ransom's fears at having it pointed at the back of his head, or Gabby knew as much about guns as her father'd intimated. Likely the latter.

“Whataya think of my gun?”

“It belongs in a museum.”

She looked indignant. “That gun is in fine working order. I keep it clean.”

“It's a cannon, not a gun. Blow a hole the size of a medicine ball in a man.”

She threw her hands up to cover her laughter. “Now you exaggerate.”

“Not by much.”

“My…my family wants me to pursue a medical degree, but I'm so fascinated with what men like you do, Inspector Ransom.”

“Really?”

“I've read Alan Pinkerton's accounts of heroic deeds during the late war, about his army of spies—
We never sleep!
—what a motto and that evil eye they use to signify themselves, it's all so…so adventurous and…and…”

“Romantic it is
not
, I can assure you.”

“Oh, but it is…what you and other Chicago detectives must see daily! I bet no two of your days are alike! Can I tell you that medical school is a bore down to my…well, to my core!”

“But isn't medicine in your makeup?”

“I hate it. Hate that it's in my blood, too!”

“It should come easily to you, following in your father's—”

“The last thing in the world I want to become is…is my father.”

He stared grimly across at her as if taking this blow for Tewes. “Does your father know your feelings?”

“He's rather wrapped up…busy with patients. Hasn't seen me…not the real me in…in…well, in forever.”

“But all that tuition going to Northwestern…”

“If I could figure out a way to use it…my studies…in tracking down and catching killers…what you do…then it might be worthwhile, but just dealing with sick and depressed and grim people all day as Father does. I know I'd rather be a copper like you, working with the dead!”

“Hmmm…perhaps you should talk to Dr. Christian Fenger then.”

“Dr. Fenger? The famous surgeon?”

“And pathologist. Does work for the police…helps us identify victims of foul play, and determines just who is and who is not a homicide victim, and how precisely their lives ended.”

“I…I've not given this area of medicine a thought, not a single thought.”

“It's not entirely new. Been with us since King William ordered a medical man to investigate suspicious deaths.”

“The first coroner? I wonder who he was.”

“Physicians working for the crown, only now you work for a municipality like Cook County.”

“Coroner…I rather like the sound of it.”

“Call on Dr. Fenger sometime, and tell him of your interest.”