Cold Morning (9 page)

“Help her out how?” Aleck sat up, interested.

Again a barely whispered word. “Lindbergh.”

Silence in the room.

The sound of footsteps in the hallway.

Aleck cleared his throat and leaned in. “Peggy, my dear, you're not telling us something.”

She tossed back her shoulders. “Don't matter no more anyhow. She's gone. Whatever gravy train was coming in now is long gone from the station.”

“But what about Lindbergh?” I asked. “Yes, she came here for a job—because of the trial. The opportunity…”

The look on her face stopped me, hard, haughty. “You just don't get it.”

“Then tell me.”

“She said she knew something that was gonna get her big money.”

“From Lindbergh? Blackmail?”

“Dunno.” Another shrug. “I mean, she could've just been crowing big-time—like she was a braggart. Put a little liquor in the broad and, well…I only got bits and pieces when she was a little, you know, tipsy. She could get chatty then. Like she couldn't keep her mouth shut. Like it spilled out of her. She
had
to tell someone. Bubbly. Then, sober the next morning, she denied everything. ‘You ain't heard me right.' That's what she said to me.”

“Tell us what you remember.”

“I don't know if…”

Aleck's voice got sharp, insistent. “Who wrote those letters, Peggy dear?”

She debated what to say but finally, in a small echoey voice, she muttered, “Violet Sharp.”

My head swam. I looked at Aleck, who was slack-jawed, eyes bright. “Violet Sharp?” he repeated.

She nodded. “Yes. Violet Sharp.” She trembled. “The one in the newspaper.”

Violet Sharp. Aleck and I exchanged knowing glances.

Anyone following the Lindbergh kidnapping understood how explosive those two words were. Violet Sharp, a girl who figured prominently back in the days immediately after the kidnapping. She'd been the downstairs maid at the Dwight Morrow mansion in Englewood, New Jersey. Charles Lindbergh had insisted his servants—and those at his mother-in-law's mansion—
not
be interviewed, trusting them, insisting they be left alone. The state police, under Colonel Schwarzkopf, initially suspected an inside job, largely because Charles and Anne usually spent the week at Englewood and only weekends at Hopewell, their unfinished homestead. But because Little Lindy had a bad cold, Anne called to say they'd be staying in Hopewell and could the chauffeur drive the nurse, Betty Gow, to help care for the baby? Violet Sharp took the call at eleven-thirty that morning. Somehow, then, the kidnapper knew the Lindberghs were staying in Hopewell.

Despite Colonel Lindbergh's adamant stance, all the servants were routinely interviewed, and were compliant and cleared. But Violet posed a problem. She was agitated, uncooperative. And the newspapers made much of her evasions. She couldn't recall where she'd been that awful windy night, at first saying she was at the movies in Englewood, then changing her story. She was with a man named Ernie, no last name, and two of his friends. Then she said she'd been to the Peanut Grill, a speakeasy in Orangeburg, New York, but drank only coffee and danced a bit—back home by eleven.

An attractive brunette, given to flirtations, Violet Sharp shifted from cooperation to belligerence. At twenty-seven, she'd emigrated from England to Canada in 1929 with her sister, Emily, in the United States nine months later at the YWCA in Manhattan. Mrs. Morrow hired her, and liked her, though other servants said she was moody, sometimes hysterical, often coy and mysterious—a woman who savored her time away from the mansion. During the course of three interviews she'd changed: a precipitous drop in weight, some forty pounds, the once-plump and sassy girl now cowering and jittery. She fainted at an interview. Her decline began with the discovery of the baby's body.

Colonel Schwarzkopf believed she'd been the informant—unwittingly or not—alerting the kidnappers to the baby being in Hopewell that night. He sent Inspector Henry Walsh to do another interview. Walsh, a blunt, threatening officer, had little patience with the evasive Violet, who, during a previous interview when she'd gotten hysterical, still managed to smile and wink at a secretary as she left the room. The police didn't trust her.

She vowed not to be interviewed again. When officers arrived at the mansion, she rushed upstairs, mixed powdered silver polish into a glass of water—a concoction containing cyanide chloride, a milky-white liquid—and walked down the stairs, a gurgling sound from the back of her throat, where she collapsed. She was dead.

Dwight Morrow, Jr., summoned by a servant, carried her body up to her bedroom.

Mrs. Morrow, in talking to the press, said Violet had “simply been frightened to death.”

Colonel Schwarzkopf announced to the press that her suicide confirmed his suspicion that she had knowledge of the crime against Charles Lindbergh, Jr.

Lindbergh himself rejected the idea.

Violet's sister, Emily, who had been employed nearby at Constance Chilton's home, had applied for a visa to return to Tult's Clump in England on March first, the day of the kidnapping. On April first, four days after the ransom was delivered, she sailed back home. She never informed the authorities. Back in England she told the indignant press that the police had hounded her innocent sister. “Death by Third Degree,” screamed the
London Daily Mirror
.

Violet remained one of the nagging mysteries of the kidnapping saga, unanswered.

The London press still clamored for answers.

The British Consul sent flowers to her funeral.

“Violet Sharp?” I said again, breathless.

Peggy nodded. She pointed to the top of the dresser, now empty of the letters she'd mentioned. “She wrote them letters to Annabel, Violet did.”

“But why?”

She blinked wildly. “A secret she told only me. They was cousins from England. They grew up together—Annabel and Violet and Violet's sister, Emily, the one who skedaddled back to England before the cops could question her.”

“Oh my God,” exclaimed Aleck.

“Indeed.” My word was swallowed.

Aleck was muttering to himself. “But what did Violet tell her cousin?” He fumbled. “I mean…well, blackmail? How?”

Peggy sighed. “She didn't like to talk much about them, the two sisters. I guess Emily and Annabel didn't like each other—but Violet liked Annabel. I asked her if Violet was…like murdered. Not a suicide. It seemed strange to hear that a young girl would kill herself like that. But then Annabel started to cry. But she said no, Violet was always a temperamental girl, melodramatic, a little crazy.”

“But the letters had to be important if someone took them?”

“
Maybe
took them,” she stressed. “Maybe Annabel got rid of them and I didn't notice.”

“Do you believe that?”

“No.” A simple, emphatic response. “Not really.”

“Then what?”

Aleck softened his voice and reached out a hand to pat the back of Peggy's wrist. She melted. “What did Violet reveal in the letters? What do you know? And how could it lead to a payoff now for Annabel? Did she expect Lindbergh to pay her money? For what? Silence?”

She looked toward the door and walked to a mirror to check her makeup. When she spotted lipstick on her tooth, she reached for a tissue and dabbed at it. Her tone addressing Aleck was confidential. “Look, I guess Violet liked to go to roadhouses back in the day when there was Prohibition and such. But she got this infatuation for some guy who lived on another rich estate nearby, some wealthy friend of the Morrows. One of the son's old friends—the son named Dwight Morrow—a guy who used to come around. A handsome devil-may-care smooth-talking fool, money dripping out of his pockets, but a real Casanova, that one. He wooed the girls and then said goodbye. I guess Violet caught his eye one night. Like she'd flirt even with the rich guys. She was a pretty young thing, I suppose, with that British accent that American men get dizzy over, though she was a little plump—like yours truly.” She beamed at Aleck. “Some men like a little meat on the bone.” A stiffled giggle. “Anyhow, she said that this rich guy and Dwight took her in a roadster to some speakeasies.”

“What was his name?” I asked.

Hesitation. “I don't want to get him in trouble.”

“His name,” I insisted.

“Blake Somerville. But you can't repeat that to
anyone
. You know, his father was, like, the lieutenant governor of New Jersey. They own, like—like, these oil refineries on the shore—that give Jersey that sickening smell. But real rich, that family. That's what Annabel said.” She paused, looked toward the door. “I mean, Violet could have been making up the story. She was a maid, for God's sake. Rich boys don't take maids to roadhouses.” A pause. “Well, maybe they do, if you know what I mean. But it could be nonsense, something you write in a letter to impress your poor cousin. Violet, Annabel said, had these flights of fancy.”

“But I can't connect the dots,” I said. “How could Annabel arrive in Flemington with the goal of blackmailing Charles Lindbergh? How would she get at him? And what information would he
pay
for?”

Peggy waited a long time. “Well, Annabel said someone in the Morrow family…like,
knew
something. Something Violet confided—it was worth its weight in gold, she said. And Colonel Lindbergh would
not
want his wife, Anne, and her mother embarrassed. It would mean Colonel Lindbergh made a mistake when he shut down the interviews at first. Doing that, you know, led to a sad ending. I mean, the Morrows are Jersey royalty, for Christ's sake.”

I nodded at Aleck. “So Annabel was going to use the letters to get Lindbergh to pay money. To buy her silence. There must have been something in the letters about the kidnapping. Something that involved the Morrow estate.”

Peggy breathed in, finished now, her eyes staring at me. “No, I…”

“You what?” said Aleck, gently.

“I don't wanna say no more.” Peggy stood up. She was shaking. “I made a mistake here.”

Aleck poured on the charm. She'd stepped toward the door, but he stretched out his hand, tapping her wrist affectionately. It took some effort on his part. “There was more in the letters, right?” he coaxed her.

“Not
them
letters.”

“But what?” I said too loudly and she grimaced. Her indifference to me—perhaps dislike?—bothered me, but of course I lacked Aleck's mysterious allure.

“Peggy, my lovely dear…” From Aleck, not me.

“There was one letter she wouldn't show me.”

“Why not?” he asked.

“Insurance, she said.”

“It was with the others?”

She shook her head. “Never was in the pile.” A sly grin. “I checked once. She let me read those letters, sort of proud of them. Like her place in history, sort of. But one time she waved this other letter at me, the last one before Violet offed herself with that silver polish. Maybe she carried it with her. Or she hid it. She said it was the key to the vault.”

Involuntarily I spun around, searching the corners of the room. “Here?”

“I guess so.”

“Did you find it?”

A sigh. “Never gave it no mind because of her, you know, murder. That spooked me. I forgot about the letters—
the
letter. The whole thing was dead with Annabel.”

“Then it's here?”

“Dunno.”

“Well…”

“We have to find it, dear,” Aleck whispered.

But at that moment there was a loud rapping on the door, and we all jumped. Unfortunately, I emitted a Victorian scream worthy of a heroine in
Tempest and Sunshine
. I flushed, horrified.

Peggy rushed to the door, although she paused to primp herself in the mirror before turning the knob. But conscious of Aleck and me nearby, she inched the door open slowly, probably with the purpose of concealing the visitor in the hallway. Her escort for the evening? Someone who'd be quickly shooed away.

“Christ, not you again.”

The door flew open.

Joshua Flagg stood there. “Excuse me, Miss Crispen…”

He stopped abruptly as he peered into the room, looking past her, flabbergasted to discover Edna Ferber and Aleck Woollcott sitting primly on the chairs, eyes focused on the annoying young Hearst upstart.

“I told you not to come back,” Peggy roared at him. “I ain't talking to you. I ain't got nothing to tell you. Annabel's killer is in jail. You gotta leave me alone. ” She looked back at us. “Christ Almighty, my room is like Grand Central Station today.”

Sheepish, sputtering, Joshua stepped back and disappeared from view. His hasty footsteps galloped down the stairs.

Chapter Nine

The letter.

“Aleck, you have to get that letter.”

“Edna dear, this obsession of yours.”

“Did you hear me, Aleck?”

“I'm not deaf, and your voice usually has the timbre of a train whistle roaring into a station.”

“Then you'll do it?”

He smiled maliciously. “That woman finds me charming. Alluring, if you will. A novelty for me, titillating though unwanted.”

“And a form of madness.”

He chuckled. “Jealousy, my dear.”

“You'll do it?”

He nodded “A glance from me and she wilts like a morning glory in the afternoon sun.”

I ignored that. “Good.” I tapped his sleeve. “Now, Aleck.”

We were sitting in the lobby of the hotel later that night, though it was difficult to concentrate because of the hullabaloo and stampede of eager feet. Reporters everywhere, bumping into one another, occasionally glancing at the two of us as we sat quietly in the plush armchairs, each with a cup of coffee on a side table.

“Now,” I repeated, “you know Peggy is searching that dismal room for the hidden letter. Tearing off the wallpaper. You do know that, Aleck? You could see it in her eye, that panic, that urgency.”

“It's late—she seemed to be waiting for a suitor to knock on her door. I mean, she sent us packing after that Joshua fellow fled down the stairs.”

“Yes—and while I was in the middle of a question.”

“You're always in the middle of a question, Ferb.”

“Be that as it may—go. She may be back home now.”

“What makes you certain she'll reveal its contents to me?”

I sucked in my lips. “You flatter her, lisp at her, flutter, and twinkle those night-owl eyes of yours. A hint of cheese strudel on your breath—I have no idea. For some reason she finds you—to use your word—alluring.” I looked around the room. “There must be something foul in the tap water of New Jersey.”

“Women have found me attractive, dear Ferb.” A sloppy grin. “You know, all the things I really like to do are either immoral, illegal, or fattening.”

“Do you find her attractive, Aleck?”

A pause. “You know the answer to that.”

“I thought so.”

“But the attention of women for a man like me is a rarity—a solar eclipse, if you will—that must be cultivated.”

I nudged him again, harder this time. “Then go cultivate.”

He stood but looked down at me. “I imagine men never find you alluring, dear Ferb.”

“They'd better not if they know what's good for them.”

“You scare men away.” He chuckled. “But you don't scare me, my dear.” He pointed a finger at me.

“I repeat—only men, Aleck. Only men.”

***

Early the next morning I took my usual walk, the streets still dead, though the bitter cold cut short my stride, yet I paused in the back parking lot, empty now, recalling that spitfire spat of Annabel and Cody Lee. The wind whistled along the eaves of the hotel, drifted through the crevices of the metal storage shed, and I lingered, listening to the ghosts that swirled and eddied there. Chilled, numb, I returned to my room, showered, dressed for the day, and scurried into the café. Aleck was already there, a cup of coffee before him as he chatted with a waiter.

“You're late.” He spotted me and motioned to a seat.

I mouthed the word “coffee” to the waiter as he rushed away.

“Tell me.” I looked into Aleck's face.

“My, my, not even a good-morning buss on the cheek.” He inserted a cigarette into his holder and purposely took his time lighting it.

“Tell me.”

“A knock on her door and again the disappointment in her face—for a moment, at least. Her expected suitor, I gather, the one she'd perfumed and powdered herself for, never showed. But she was overjoyed to find me rapping on her door.”

“The letter, Aleck.”

Aleck peered over his eyeglasses, which teetered on the edge of his nose. He contemplated a cinnamon roll on a plate before him, one fingertip touching the sweet frosting. He licked it with approval. “I may have to order another.”

Bitingly, I said, “I'll order you a…gross, Aleck. Tell me.”

“A couple glasses of wine late in the evening at a hideous log-cabin tavern called, forgive me, Edna, the Dew Drop Inn. The hoi polloi refuses to avoid egregious puns. Can you tell me why?”

“Can you tell me why you're blathering about nonsense?” I smiled. “What don't you want to tell me?”

“As Peggy and I nestled into a food-stained booth, torn with springs disturbing my derriere…”

“Please, Aleck.”

“She went on and on about hearing me on the radio. The Town Crier. My comforting tones, she called them.”

“Aleck!”

“Anyway, she did locate that letter, right after we left—after, that is, Joshua Flagg interrupted and she showed both of us out. She wasn't happy about the letter.”

“Did you read it?”

He shook his head. “She refused to show it to me, though she did reveal some of the contents. She found it, remarkably enough, hidden behind a loose floor panel in that hideous room. Behind Annabel's bed.”

“Of course, she already knew it existed.”

“Yes, Annabel had hinted at some of the scandalous contents. And its contents
alarmed
her. Thank God for the Dew Drop Inn.”

“Tell me,” I insisted.

Aleck's fingers wrestled with the cinnamon roll, although he still gripped his cigarette holder. “Let me first say that poor Peggy now is frightened. Somehow the murder of Annabel and our visit and the talk of the letters from Violet Sharp—and, to be truthful, the mention of Charles Lindbergh and the kidnapping—all became a jumble in the same mathematical equation—well, she's added all these elements together in the test tube of her mind, and she's…afraid.”

“But of what?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Of Cody Lee Thomas.”

That stunned me—unexpected. “But he's in jail.”

“No matter. She'd got this idea that he'll break out of jail.”

“And what? Kill her?”

“I know, I know. It makes no sense. But she says he's a brute.”

“He's a gentle man.”

Aleck peered over his eyeglasses. “Really, Edna. You do sentimentalize the most loathsome of the male species.”

I ignored that. “There has to be something else.”

“Well, yes. Cody Lee is safely out of the way. To me, he's not part of the nonsense Annabel believed, by way of Violet's own fantastic imagination. But she thinks someone else is involved with the kidnapping, maybe a friend of his—and possibly around.”

“Preposterous.” A waiter glanced out the small kitchen window, then disappeared. I leaned in, confidential. “Just what did Violet Sharp say in that final letter?”

He sucked in his breath. “Explosive, my dear, but dear Peggy is hesitant to tell all.”

We locked eyes. “But she told you enough.”

“I
am
a charming man.”

“And the generous purveyor of a bottle of wine in the…Dew Drop Inn.”

“Please, those words sound bleak coming from your novelistic mouth.”

“Tell me.”

The manager, Horace Tripp, walked briskly out of the kitchen and stood, arms folded, watching us. He didn't look happy. Nearby tables began to fill, but he paid them no mind. Rather, his glare suggested he was solely focused on Aleck and me. Out of the corner of my eye I could see his head flick toward us, curious, though when I looked in his direction, he twisted his head away so quickly it was almost comical. The vaudeville comedian with exaggerated stage business. He picked a piece of lint off his morning coat.

Aleck, pausing in his story, noticed him. He leaned in, nodded at me, and said loudly, “The manager cannot take his eyes off us.”

But I was impatient. “Finish, Aleck. What did Violet write to Annabel?”

Aleck scratched his head, deliberated. “I'm piecing together the words, some of which were delivered from a drunken if provocative mouth. Her delivery was like scattershot from a faulty shotgun. But do you remember how she told us that someone in the Morrow household was the key to her fortune?”

“Yes, of course.”

He spaced out his words slowly. “The
reason
Annabel believed her fortune now lay in Flemington had to do with Colonel Lindbergh's schizophrenic brother-in-law, Dwight Morrow, Jr.”

“What?”

“I know, I know,” he went on in a hurry. “But that could be stuff and nonsense. I gather the friend Violet often talked about, this Blake Somerville, the wealthy cad, was someone Violet thought she loved. According to Peggy, Violet—leastwise Annabel's rendition of her scattered cousin via the letters—was a pretty girl, but flighty, given to infatuations and romances and…and sexual flings that she feared Mrs. Morrow would discover. A girl who, as they say, liked a good time at parties.”

“But what does this have to do with the kidnapping?”

“Let me get there. Violet mentioned Dwight Morrow's intense dislike of his brother-in-law, Charles Lindbergh. The young man—the only son in the family—adored his older sister Anne, resented the famed aviator squiring her away into an international world of flight and fancy. Not only that, but Lindbergh used to make fun of him. Dwight suffered emotional breakdowns, hallucinations, and such, and he even refused to attend the lavish wedding of the two.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “But you're not saying
he
was involved with the kidnapping of the baby, are you?”

“I'm only telling you what Peggy gathered from talks with Annabel. Violet liked roadhouses, especially in those dry days of bootleggers and rumrunners, and she craved the attention of men, especially the dipsomaniac butler named Septimus Banks. They were butlers and townsmen and livery grooms, plebians, the help, but Blake Somerville swept her off her feet, a slick operator, charming, moneyed, amoral.”

“And?”

“According to Peggy, in the long last letter, Violet insisted Blake played into Dwight's dislike of Lindbergh, played up the young man's resentment of his family. He felt he'd been duped out of fifty grand in his dead father's will, that his severe mother was cruel to him. To his face she once called him ‘the family tragedy.' Violet was amused by Blake's suave manipulation, his power over people. Blake wanted to help Dwight get back at his family.”

“You're not saying
he
orchestrated the kidnapping of the baby? Preposterous.”

“That's where Peggy begged off, dear Ferb. She suddenly got scared talking to me—I guess I should have ordered another bottle of cheap wine at the Dew Droop Out, or whatever it's called. Her last words before she became a clam—she mumbled about a stupid prank gone wrong.”

“A prank? Preposterous.”

“I guess Violet described Lindbergh as an ah-shucks country boy at heart, a simple man who liked to play stupid pranks, especially on his family. One such prank supposedly was to hide the baby in a closet for a short time from his wife and the nurse, Betty Gow.”

“Preposterous.”

“You have to stop saying that, Edna. At least not so loudly. You're like a parrot in real pearls.”

“This is a fantastic story.”

“Keep in mind Violet liked to make up stories, according to Annabel. A
liar.
”

“Still and all…”

“You've read the biography, Edna. Lindy is a hero but a country boy at heart. A simple jokester.”

I frowned. “I know the stories—how he thought it funny to splatter mud on folks watching him taxi his plane. Substituting gasoline into the water jug of a pilot so that the man had to be hospitalized.”

“Boyish stunts.”

“Done by a
man
, Aleck. I've read that Betty Gow, discovering the cradle empty, pleaded with Lindbergh, ‘Do you have the baby?
Please don't fool me
.' My emphasis here, Aleck. She thought he was playing a game—again.”

Aleck wasn't happy with me. “That meant nothing.” He made his round eyes into slits. “Violet Sharp was a storyteller.”

“There's more, right?”

I looked around me. The room was filling up, and Horace Tripp was rocking on his heels, his steely eyes on us.

Aleck sat back in his chair, blew a smoke ring into the air. “Violet wrote in that letter that Dwight Morrow
hated
the baby, but Blake…well, Blake didn't love anything but idle game-playing. Blake Somerville was a few years ahead of Dwight at Amherst College, dropped out, drifted back in, but the real contact happened when both were confined to Montclair Manor for treatment.”

“What is Montclair Manor?”

“I gather it's a loony bin for rich folks.”

“So Dwight and Blake…”

“Rediscovered each other, old neighbors, and Blake wooed the impressionable Violet and…”

“And Annabel came to believe they were instrumental in snatching the baby?”

Aleck didn't answer for a minute. Then, slowly, “This is a stretch, Edna. If you ask me, it's a lot of hooey. Violet was a troublemaker, an hysteric, and a fable-maker. Peggy wouldn't go on except to say that Violet was rattled after the baby disappeared that night, made a frantic visit to her sister, Emily, across town, who in short order boarded a boat back to England. I gather Emily was also a guest at roadhouses with this Blake, a man who obviously liked to entertain the help, if you know what I mean. Then Violet, questioned three or four times by the state police, killed herself.”

“My God.” I breathed in. “But there is no proof.”

“None whatsoever. Just Violet's rambling in that last letter, now tucked away in a different place by Peggy.”

“She has to give it to the police.”

Aleck laughed. “I don't think she'll be doing that.”