Fatal as a Fallen Woman (17 page)

"I may not be able to stop him. What will you do if I can't?" Diana felt responsible for all the residents of the hotel, but Jane in particular concerned her. She was a cut above the others here, more refined. And she had, Diana thought, at least a chance of leading a respectable life.

"I've accumulated a nest egg. Still, I don't particularly want to leave. Not yet." Jane met Diana's gaze, but the light was wrong for Diana to see beyond the spectacles. She had no idea how Jane really felt about her situation. Or if she had any prospects for becoming Mrs. Alan Kent.

"I need to get back to the desk," Jane said when Ning returned for his lesson. "I left Red Katie in charge, but Monday is one of our busiest days. She's needed to entertain our guests."

Reminded of what was going on in the other parlors on this floor, and in various bedrooms, Diana decided to use her mother's suite as a classroom.

* * * *

Ning was a delight. The child had a natural aptitude for recognizing letters and remembering their sounds. "That my name," he said as soon as Diana wrote it on a blank sheet of paper.

"Yes, that's right. And by changing the first letter, you spell other words that rhyme with Ning. See? Ring. King. Sing." She inscribed each one as she sounded it out.

"Mrs. Elmira sing sometimes."

"She does?" Astonishment laced Diana's voice. "You've heard her?"

He nodded earnestly.

It seemed her mother had developed a soft spot for Ning, just as Diana had herself. "Did you see my mother the night my father died?"

She hadn't meant to ask that. The words just slipped out. But since they had, she waited eagerly for Ning's reply. He was clearly the most observant person on the premises.

"I not here then. I go home at night."

A small sigh escaped Diana. "Of course you do." So much for the hope he might have noticed something that would exonerate Elmira. Apparently Nellie was the only one who'd seen her that night.

"Do you live with your aunt?" Diana asked Ning.

He nodded. "She own laundry. Very fine business."

Relieved to discover that the aunt Jane had mentioned was not a prostitute, Diana coaxed Ning into telling her about his life in Hop Alley. For a short while, listening to his enthusiastic chatter, she was able to forget the dilemma that plagued her and simply enjoy a little boy's company.

The respite did not last. As soon as Diana had installed Ning at her mother's desk and set him to copying letters of the alphabet, her thoughts returned the night of the murder. Nellie, she recalled, had described lace trimmed gloves—black silk with silver stripes and frothy black lace at the wrists. Curious, she went in search of them.

Elmira kept her gloves in a drawer in the wardrobe. Diana found three pairs, but none were lace-trimmed black silk. She supposed someone might have borrowed them. The girls working at the Elmira were hardly the most upstanding citizens in Denver. One of them might well have helped herself to Elmira's property in her absence.

But Diana had always had a lively imagination. Now it occurred to her that there could be a more sinister explanation for the disappearance of the gloves. After all, it had been Nellie, the only witness to Elmira's return to the hotel, who'd nearly been run down by a dog cart. Had the real murderer, anxious to ensure that Elmira continued to look guilty, removed the black gloves? And could that some person, she wondered, have also tried to do away with Big Nose Nellie?

* * * *

The bright beams of Tuesday's full moon lit the parlor of Diana's mother's suite. When she opened the window, she also let in the raucous nighttime noises of Holladay Street. With bleak amusement, she concluded that this was quite probably the only room in the neighborhood with a raised sash. There wasn't much to see, and in any case the grillwork across the opening prevented her from leaning out, but just now she needed a breath of fresh air.

"I've just wasted another day," she said without turning. "This morning I finally tracked down Henry Burnett, the reporter, but he was no use at all."

He hadn't even bothered to take a look at her father's body. He'd relied for his information on the same source Diana had already consulted, good old Charlie, the assistant manager of the Windsor Hotel. Worse, Burnett adhered to the party line in his conclusions: Elmira had run away, therefore Elmira must be guilty.

"I spent the afternoon," she continued, "reading every word in every issue of the
Rocky Mountain News
from the week of my father's death, hoping there might be some clue contained in the events reported there."

The exercise had given her a blazing headache. Thank goodness she'd agreed to try one of Long Tall Linda's cures to alleviate the pain. She'd been leery at first of the mixture of sliced potatoes and coffee grounds, but desperate enough to take to her bed and allow the country-bred woman, who had a reputation for knowing useful home remedies, to place it on her forehead with a rag tied around it to keep it in place. She'd closed her eyes, breathed in the fragrance of coffee, and dozed for an hour. By the time she awoke, the headache had subsided.

Discarded newspapers still lay scattered about the suite, literally carpeting the parlor with loose sheets of newsprint. The
Rocky Mountain News
sold for five cents a copy. On weekdays there were ten pages, six-columns wide. The Sunday edition was longer and more inclusive, with features on society and entertainment and even a book review column. Diana supposed she'd hoped some line might leap out, providing just the solution she'd been looking for. No such luck.

She'd been briefly encouraged when she'd discovered lists of visitors to Denver, along with what hotel each had stayed in, but without a name for her mystery woman she had no way to link any of those people to her father. The information she sought remained elusive . . . as Matt Hastings had been of late. Until tonight, she hadn't seen or heard from him since her visit to his house on Saturday.

She turned from the window to hurl a blunt question in his direction. "Have you learned anything?"

"Gilbert is still trying to worm his way into the confidence of Miranda's servants. For some reason they are reluctant to speak ill of their employer."

With a sigh, Diana reached for the nearest paper. The least she could do was tidy up the room and offer Matt a place to sit down.

"A bribe might help," Matt said, "but given your financial difficulties . . . ."

Diana paused with the crumpled pages clutched to her bosom. He still thought her penniless and she couldn't think of any plausible explanation for the fact that she now had over five hundred dollars in her possession, thanks to the bills Elmira had flung at her. She supposed she could admit to the bank draft from Horatio Foxe. After all, she'd never actually said she had
no
money.

"About my finances," she began.

"Diana," he said at the same time. "I've had an idea."

She yielded the floor, secretly relieved not to have to confess her deception just yet.

"You're not comfortable living here. I can tell that. Listening to . . . well, I don't need to spell it out. This is no place for a lady."

He was right. The first few nights she'd been too tired to pay much attention to what went on around her, but the longer she stayed at the Elmira the harder she found it to ignore exactly what kind of business was being transacted in her mother's "boarding house." She did not look forward to trying to get to sleep later. The Elmira was busiest, she'd been told, on Tuesday nights. That was when the big-money men came around. They never showed up on weekends. They were with their families then.

Had she really only arrived in Denver last Thursday?

"What do you suggest?" Diana asked. She had to admit her will to remain at the Elmira had weakened considerably after her mother's visit, and she had been shaken by Leeves's threats.

"Move into my house. You'll have access to your prime suspect, Miranda, since she lives right next door. Furthermore, I can introduce you to people you could not possibly meet if you stay here. Your father's acquaintances. If anyone knows anything that can exonerate your mother, that's the way to discover it. We need to work together on this, Diana."

He didn't give her the opportunity to object, simply rushed on with the details of his plan. "We'll pretend you've just arrived in Denver and that we plan to marry. I've already found a suitable older woman to act as a chaperone. And Dorcas is back. With two respectable older women in residence, there will be no scandal attached to a widow and a bachelor living in the same house."

Diana didn't much care what Denver's whist-playing society matrons thought of her, but there was a more serious drawback to the plan. "I was about to accept a real proposal of marriage when I got word of Father's death."

 Matt's face contorted in sudden anger. "Don't tell me the cad broke it off when he heard about the murder. If he cared for you at all, he should have come with you to Denver."

"I didn't tell him what had happened, only that I had to go away for a while on family business. I was in New York. He was in Maine, where he practices medicine. I didn't want to ask him to abandon his patients."

Matt was silent for a moment, then cleared his throat. "I see no problem, then, in pretending you plan to marry me. Your doctor is an entire continent away. He'll never know. There's no reason you need ever tell him anything about me."

"But if you and I are engaged—"

"An engagement of convenience. That's all it will be. A ploy to allow us to work together to discover the identity of your father's killer and bring him, or her, to justice."

Diana pondered Matt's suggestion. She didn't quite see why they needed a false engagement in order for her to live as a guest in his house. She'd stayed at Ben's house in Bangor when she'd been in Maine. Maggie Northcote hadn't been much of a chaperone, but the proprieties had been observed. There had been no scandal—at least none that stemmed from sharing close quarters with an unmarried man.

"Why claim we're to marry?" she asked. "It seems an unnecessary lie. Besides, Miranda already knows when I arrived in Denver."

"And she'll want to find out what you've been up to. She can visit my bride-to-be. She can't come here to see you."

He hadn't answered her question, Diana thought, but she let the matter drop. She was more than ready to leave Holladay Street. She'd done all she could here and there seemed little advantage in staying longer at the Elmira. The only thing holding her back was the sense of responsibility she felt towards her mother's employees.

"I'd like to close the Elmira," she said, "but I can't just toss the other residents out into the street."

"Is that all that's keeping you from agreeing to move in with me?"

"I guess it is," she admitted, although she still had reservations about passing herself off as his future bride.

"Send them all to Torrence. You know I own a dance hall there. They can have the rooms on the second floor."

"That's very generous of you, but are you sure you want to risk having them turn your dance hall in to a brothel?"

"What they do once they move in is their own business."

Diana stared at him. He was almost too anxious for her to move in with him. She wondered, as she watched him examine one of the framed fashion prints that decorated the walls, if she should be suspicious of his motives. He hadn't said he believed in her mother's innocence, or that he agreed with her that Miranda was the most likely suspect. Was something else going on here?

"Why are you willing to do so much for me? For them?"

"Because I care about you, Diana, and I don't want you to have to worry about these people." He took both her hands in his much bigger ones. "Let me ease the burden a bit. Send everyone but Jane to Torrence."

Diana frowned. "What's to become of Jane?"

His smile was gentle. "It had occurred to me that my fianceé should have a lady's maid."

A chuckle escaped her. "If you're not careful, you'll turn me into one of the less admirable characters in Miss Austen's novels." Or one of Mrs. Radcliffe's! "I'll feel quite hemmed in by society's restraints if you have your way."

"The strictures will not be so severe, I promise you."

Needing to put a little space between them, Diana stepped back and tugged free of his grip. "I'll talk to the boarders tomorrow. If they agree, then yes, I will leave the Elmira and accept your hospitality."

"And you'll tell them we intend to marry?" He saw her hesitation. "People will talk to you more easily if we pretend to be engaged, Diana. Especially Miranda."

"All right," she promised. "For now we'll let everyone think we're to wed. But the moment that lie no longer serves any useful purpose, we tell the truth."

"Of course," he agreed.

Chapter Nine

The next day, Diana took the opportunity the morning meal provided to talk to everyone who worked at the Elmira Hotel. "I feel fairly certain now that my mother is not coming back," she said. "If she does, she'll be arrested. If she doesn't, someone else must take over here."

"You're selling out?" Red Katie slammed down her fork, making the sausage on her plate leap into the air. Her face turned very nearly the color of her hair and her eyes flashed with a mutinous gleam.

"I'm closing the hotel," Diana answered, "but any of you who want to can go to Mr. Hastings's place in Torrence. He's offered you free lodging until you get established there."

"Torrence?" Jane looked startled.

"A mining town?" Honeycomb sounded offended.

"Them miners got money," Long Tall Linda mused, her horsey face creased in thought.

"True enough," Maybelle agreed.

Diana took a deep breath and told them about Ed Leeves's threat. "He was
not
here on my mother's behalf. I am certain of that."

"Why should Matt Hastings do us any favors?" Maryam asked, fixing cold eyes first on Diana, then on Jane.

Diana hesitated. She didn't have a good answer for them, except the lie Matt wanted her to tell. If she was going to convince Miranda the engagement was real, she supposed this was as good a time as any to practice the role of bride-to-be. She could use the rehearsal. "Mr. Hastings has asked me to marry him."