A New York Christmas (9 page)

“Why?” Phinnie challenged. “Why were you even looking for her?”

“Because Harley asked me to help him.”

Phinnie’s eyebrows rose. “Why would Harley want to find her?”

“For heaven’s sake!” Jemima said desperately. “To make sure she didn’t interrupt your wedding and embarrass you! Or embarrass the family, of course,” she added, remembering that Phinnie must know Harley as well as she did.

The color bleached out of Phinnie’s face and she looked stunned. “Harley asked
you
? That’s not what he said …”

“Really?” Jemima should not have been surprised. Except the thought that came fleetingly to her mind was whether it was Harley who was lying or Phinnie. “Think about it,” she went on. “How would I even know that your mother was in New York, let alone where to look for her?”

“Then … then maybe it was Celia,” Phinnie suggested. “She’s known my mother for years. She pretends to have liked her, but she’s very protective of the family. She would be; it’s her family too.”

“You aren’t suggesting that Celia killed your mother, surely?” Jemima was aghast. It was a monstrous notion. “Why, for heaven’s sake? That makes no sense at all!” And the moment the words were out of her mouth, she knew that it made very ugly sense, even though she could not believe it.

Phinnie met her eyes boldly. “Yes, it does. When I marry Brent, I will be mistress of this house. What will she be? I could understand it if she were not willing to see that happen.”

Jemima looked at her icily. “Yes, I believe you could. You have the advantage of me. I hadn’t even considered such a thing.”

Phinnie’s face tightened. She recognized the insult. “There’s rather a lot you don’t consider,” she retaliated. “You’ll probably end up like Celia, being hostess and housekeeper for your brother, if he marries and then loses his wife. Although of course he won’t have the Albright power or influence. Hardly anybody else has.”

“You really value that, don’t you?” Jemima stared at Phinnie as if she had not truly seen her before. “How far would you go to make sure you get it? The police thought you might have done it yourself, you know? I told them that was impossible. That you were not the kind of person who would even think of such a thing. Perhaps I was wrong?”

Phinnie blushed scarlet. “You told them that?”

“Yes. And you’re right, I am naïve,” Jemima replied. “But perhaps they will discover that for themselves.” She turned to walk away, but Phinnie grasped her arm and held her back.

“Jemima!” She gulped. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I’m horribly confused. I hated my mother all my life, because she left me and my father. I know it hurt him too. He never even imagined loving anyone else. But now that she’s dead, and in such an awful way, I’m sad that I’ll never know her. I didn’t think I wanted to, but I’m not sure.” She gulped. “Above all, I love Brent so much it makes me sick to think that anything could go wrong with our wedding. I know what I said about the Albright name, but it really doesn’t matter to me. In fact, at times I wish we were quite ordinary, then there
wouldn’t be all this pressure to do everything the right way all the time. It’s like … like being royalty. I don’t really want to be a princess. I just want to be with Brent.”

Jemima smiled in spite of her own confusion of emotions. Did she believe Phinnie? Yes, at least in part. Everything she had said was true. But there was a lingering presence there of passion to succeed, at any cost. She had been so quick to blame Jemima. The kind of love she felt was like a fever. It overcame everything else and destroyed the restraints she might normally have exercised.

“Jemima!” Phinnie said urgently. “You must believe me!”

“Of course,” Jemima agreed quietly, and it was almost true. Phinnie wouldn’t let Jemima go to trial for a murder she had not committed—well, probably she wouldn’t. Before Phinnie could see the doubt in her eyes, she turned and walked away. Phinnie called after her, but she pretended not to have heard. She was surprised by how hurt she felt, and by how frightened she was.

T
hat night Jemima did not sleep well. She woke up often and, even though the room was well heated, she felt cold and stiff. There was no sound, not even that of the wind outside the window. She opened the curtains and saw everything cloaked with snow, the huge city lit as if it too were awake, but frozen into lifelessness. She had been here less than two weeks, but she had learned to like New York—the vitality, the strange mixture of peoples.

And yet she was terribly alone, and accused of a crime for which her life could be taken. And there was no one to help her but herself.

If she was her father’s daughter, that should be enough. Thomas Pitt had been a regular policeman, solving murders just like this one, before he joined Special Branch.

She went back to bed and lay with the covers up to her chin, trying to get warm again, and concentrated her thoughts. What would he advise her to do? Certainly not give up and wait for help, or lie here feeling sorry for herself and hope that the police went on looking for the answer. Why should they not accept that the foreign young woman who had found the body was not as guilty as she seemed?

Patrick Flannery’s strong face with its gentleness and humor came into her mind, and she forced herself to dismiss it.

Her only defense was to attack. In the morning she would get up early, have breakfast in the kitchen, and then go out and begin to look for the truth. Nothing had been stolen, Phinnie had said, and a glance at Maria’s possessions and style of life would have been enough to know there was nothing worth taking. The knife, the violence of the wound that had killed her, made it clear that bringing about her death was the sole purpose of her assailant. So it was someone who knew her.

Then Jemima must learn to know her also. How long had Maria lived there? Who were her friends, and her enemies? Who might believe she had wronged them, or was a threat to them? And why? What could she know of anyone that was worth such a violent and terrible way of preventing her from telling it?

B
y nine o’clock the next morning, Jemima was already at the apartment building where Maria Cardew
had lived, blinking against the flat, white light reflected off the snow. She had chosen different clothes from the ones she’d had on when she was here with Harley, and she’d pinned her hair up in as different a style as it would take.

She had planned what to say. She was less than satisfied with it, but all the alternatives she could think of were even worse. It was always best to stick as close to the truth as possible. It was easier to remember, and one was less likely to make an irretrievable error. Apart from that, consistently lying took up a great deal of one’s emotional energy, and that in itself often gave one away.

“Good morning,” she said cheerfully to the first woman she met as she stood in the hallway. Of course the one thing she could not disguise was her English accent. Her voice would betray her every time.

“Mornin’,” the woman replied, at first barely glancing at Jemima, then stopping and looking at her again more carefully.

Now was the time for the first invention. It might be passed around within hours, so she must be careful what she said. “I wonder if you can help me.” She smiled tentatively. “The woman who died up on the third floor—”

The face of the woman in front of her hardened. “If you’re from one o’ those newspapers, you can just turn around and go right back where you came from!” she said tartly. “She were a good-livin’ woman, an’ I got nothin’ to say.” She started to move away.

“I’m not!” Jemima said sharply, taking a step after her. “She has English family. I want to be able to write to them and tell them that she was properly cared for, and there were people to speak well of her …”

The woman stopped and looked back. She surveyed Jemima up and down, and Jemima met her eyes with total innocence. So far what she had said was the truth.

“So what do you want to know, then?” the woman said cautiously. “She’s gone, poor soul. Can’t do nothin’ for her now.”

“I can speak well of her reputation,” Jemima replied. “I think I would want that after my death, wouldn’t you?”

“I s’pose,” the woman conceded. “She deserved it, anyhow.”

Jemima smiled. “It’s a horribly cold morning. Would you like a cup of coffee? There’s a place about two blocks away from here. I would be pleased if you would join me.”

“There’s a better one back there.” The woman jerked her head, indicating the opposite direction.

“Excellent,” Jemima said immediately. “Please lead the way.”

“Don’t look nothing from the outside,” the woman warned.

“That hardly matters,” Jemima replied. “Is it warm?”

The woman smiled. “You bet! My name’s Ellie Shultz.”

“Jemima Pitt. How do you do?” She held out her hand.

The woman looked puzzled.

“I’m English. That’s the way we say hello.”

The woman gave a little laugh and took Jemima’s hand.

They spoke little on the journey over the freezing pavements. Ellie nodded to several people and called out greetings to others. She was right about the coffee shop. It was shabby, parts of the roof hung with icicles where the gutters had broken, but inside was warm and several people welcomed her. The black woman behind the counter gave them a brilliant smile and offered them coffee. At a corner table a man with a thick beard was speaking in Russian to his companion, and laughing jovially at her response.

Ellie gave Jemima a questioning glance, and Jemima smiled her approval. She found it exciting rather than strange, like several districts of London squashed into one.

The coffee smelled every bit as good as Ellie had said, and while it cooled Jemima asked about Maria Cardew.

“That place wasn’t really hers,” Ellie explained. “It was Sara Godwin’s, but she was so sick, poor soul, she couldn’t manage. Maria came to see her, and just stayed. Looked after her, she did. Couldn’t have been better to her if they’d been sisters. Sat up with her all night sometimes, when she was really bad.”

“Oh!” Jemima was surprised by this, but then remembered the empty bed in the flat. “So what happened to Sara Godwin?”

“She got a bit better,” Ellie said cheerfully. She blew on her coffee, impatient to be able to drink it. “Last time I saw her she were up and walking. Maria cooked for her an’ everything. Kept the place clean, washed the sheets and that sort of thing. Poor Sara was too sick to do it herself. Not that she wouldn’t have. Just couldn’t hardly move.”

“But she got better?”

“Yeah. Don’t know if it was for keeps, poor thing. But
cared for each other, those two. Sara’s husband was gone. Died hard, she told me once.”

She went on to tell stories of both women. The more Jemima heard, the deeper her sense of loss became. She could not help seeing Maria Cardew’s face as she had looked up at the snow on the trees in Central Park, and the joy that had been in it.

“But where did Sara Godwin go?” she asked at length, when they had finished their third cup of the best coffee she had ever tasted.

Ellie shook her head. “I dunno. Some man was looking for her, last I heard. Didn’t mean her any good, I’d bet. She must have gone to get away from him. Maybe she’ll be back. She didn’t take much with her.”

“Did Maria tell you that?”

“She said somebody’d followed Sara. Wish I knew she were all right. Course, she’ll be torn up to pieces about Maria.” She sniffed. “A good few people will be.” She looked hard at Jemima. “You see they speak right about her! I don’t know who did that to her, and likely they’ll never find out. Far as the police think, she was just another woman nobody wanted. But you can’t help it if you lose your folks and there’s no one to care. Woman on your own doesn’t mean you’re a whore!”

Jemima had a sudden vision of loneliness, poverty, always dealing with judgments based on ignorance and fighting for warmth and a place to belong. Why on earth had Maria Cardew left all the safety of an excellent marriage in England, and her own small child who desperately needed her, for such a life?

“Thank you,” she said with a wave of feeling. “If she was kind to someone in need, that repays a multitude of past errors … if there were any.”