Crimson Snow (28 page)

And then she laughed. Of course she would! She and Patrick would, with any luck at all, soon be very well-to-do indeed. She, Hilda Johansson Cavanaugh, would sit on committees with the likes of the Mrs. Studebakers and the Oliver ladies, and she and Patrick would be invited to parties at this house. Then and there Hilda resolved to keep an eye on the housekeeping standards of Tippecanoe Place when she was a fine lady visitor, and have a word with Mr. Williams if they were not acceptable.

It was such an agreeable thought that she ran up the remaining flight of stairs as if on wings. How good life was! How fortunate she was! But it was not all good fortune. If she, Hilda Johansson, had not had a good brain, if she had not solved the Malloys' problem for them, none of these wonderful things would have happened. And before she could settle into her new life, there was another problem looming before her to be solved, a big one. She'd best stop mooning about and get to work.

Sitting in Mr. Williams's room, she gave careful thought to the wording of the telegram she needed to send. Telegrams were not very private, not like letters. She didn't know who might see it on its way to Mr. Perkins.

After many attempts and crossings-out (and the waste of a good deal of Mr. Williams's paper), she sat back to look at what she had written (in capital letters, like a proper telegram):

YOUR REPORTS TO G STUDEBAKER STOLEN STOP SEND COPIES IMMEDIATELY STOP ALSO ARRANGE TO MEET AS SOON AS POSSIBLE STOP URGENT SIGNED H JOHANSSON FOR G STUDEBAKER

It was going to be a ruinously expensive wire to send, but Hilda would pay for it herself. She still had plenty of expense money from Mr. Barrett, and she felt at least partly responsible for the loss of the reports.

She looked out of the window. The weather was worse than ever. A stiff wind was driving the mix of rain and snow horizontally, and it was freezing as it hit the ground. She could see almost no one on the streets, not even in carriages. The roads were too bad to risk driving horses that might easily break a leg on the ice. Sighing, she went to her own room to don her warmest and most waterproof garments.

She found Anton in one of the cellars, stoking the furnace. He looked like a guttersnipe, his face and shirt black with soot.

“Have you been rolling in the coal?” asked Hilda pleasantly.

Anton grinned. “It blew back on me when I opened the door. I'm not real good at the furnace yet, but I'm learning.”

“Be careful you do not burn yourself to a crisp before you do learn. Now, Anton, I must take a telegram to Western Union.”

“In this weather? I'll take it, Hilda. Leastways, as soon as I get cleaned up I will.”

“Thank you, but this one I prefer to take myself. Where is the Western Union office?”

“Main Street, next door to the Oliver. Well, it's in the Oliver, actually, in the building, I mean. But it's no weather for a lady to be out in. Better let me.”

She smiled at that. “I am not a lady. Not yet. Not quite. I will be careful, Anton.”

Main Street was four blocks away. Hilda was chilled to the bone before she had reached the end of the driveway. The wind, coming straight from the north, blew rain against her cheek with the force of hail and penetrated every seam of her clothing. She could barely keep her footing. She was numb with cold and nearly blinded from the ice on her eyelashes when she reached the Washington Street side of the Oliver. That was the main entrance, and she could step in and get warm and cut through the lobby to the other side.

“Be careful, miss!” A bellboy caught her arm as she slipped on the wet marble floor of the entry. “You didn't ought to be out in that there ice storm, miss. Was you wanting a room?”

She fumbled in a pocket for a handkerchief and wiped her eyes. “No, I only want to warm myself for a little. If I go out that door over there, how far is it to the telegraph office?”

“No need to go out, miss. There's an entrance right here in the hotel. If you was wanting to send a telegram, I can do it for you, miss.”

His voice was eager. Business had not been very good this morning, Hilda surmised. She reached in her pocket for the message she had composed so carefully.

The paper was wet. Unfolding it, she found that the ink had run a little. “Will they be able to read this, do you think?” She handed the note to the boy.

He read it, and his face changed. “Say, miss, if you're writin' to that Perkins fellow, you need to know there ain't no such person. Well, there is, if you know what I mean, only that ain't his name. And whatever his name is, I could get your message to him quicker if I just took it myself. 'Cause, on account of he's here in the hotel right this minute!”

Hilda blinked away the water that had dripped from her sodden hat into her eyes. “How do you know? Is your name Joe, perhaps?”

“That it is, miss, and—oh! You'd be Miss Johansson! I didn't reckernize you, but you talk kind of funny, like a Swede. Beggin' yer pardon, miss.”

“It does not matter. Joe, if you will go up to Mr. Perkins's room and ask him to come down here, I will give you twenty-five cents. If he comes back with you, I will give you another twenty-five cents. Tell him it is about Colonel Studebaker's business and I am a messenger for him. And is there a place where I can dry my face and tidy myself a little?”

“You bet, miss! The ladies' retiring room has towels, and mirrors, and there's a maid there to help you. And when you're done you can come back out to the lounge, and I'll bring Mr. Perkins-or-whoever-he-is to you in a jiffy!”

Hilda gravely handed him a quarter and went in the direction he pointed out to effect repairs.

When she came out, as dry and neat as possible in the circumstances, she looked around for Joe. He was just coming out of the elevator with a man, and Hilda uttered a regrettable Swedish expression under her breath. The man was not well dressed—not shabby, exactly, but not the natty dresser Andy had described—and he was clean shaven. Plainly this was some other Mr. Perkins, and she had wasted time while the telegram to the real detective could have been on its way.

Joe bowed the man to a seat and came to get Hilda.

“Joe, that is not—” she began in an undertone.

“Yes, it is, miss. He looks different, but he's the same man. I follered him all one night. He can change his name, and he can change his clothes and shave off his mustache, but he can't change his voice nor the way he walks. That's the man as was cal-lin' hisself Perkins the last time he stayed here.”

“You are sure?”

“Sure as I'm standin' here, miss.”

“Very well.” She handed over the other quarter and allowed herself to be escorted to the bored-looking man in the armchair by the potted palm.

“This here's Miss Johansson, sir, as was asking for Mr. Perkins.” And without waiting for the man's reaction, Joe melted away, leaving Hilda to cope as best she could.

The man had risen, of course. Now he bowed slightly. “I'm afraid there's some mistake. My name is not Perkins.”

“No,” said Hilda very quietly. “I do not imagine that it is. But you are a detective hired by Colonel George Studebaker to investigate a problem in this city. My first duty is to tell you that your reports to him have been stolen, and he needs you to give him copies. But I am investigating a problem, too, that I begin to think may be connected. We should go somewhere more private to talk, should we not?”

“Here,” said the man in a near whisper, “are you a Pinkerton, too?”

“Then it is true that they have hired some women? No, I am not, but I am an investigator, and we must talk.”

“There's always my room,” he said dubiously.

“No.” Hilda blushed and was furious with herself. “I am an unmarried woman. That would not do at all. But there is a writing room, and I do not believe anyone is in it now.”

He gestured acquiescence and Hilda led the way.

“Now, how the dickens did you figure out who I am?” he said, when they had reached the quiet sanctuary of the writing room.

“I still do not know who you are, only
what
you are.”

“My name's Frank Lowell, if you must know. But how—”

“I work for the Studebakers. Colonel Studebaker told me your name—the name of Perkins, I mean—and I put that together with some other things. But there are questions I need answered, and quickly. A man is wrongly accused of murder, and he is very ill.”

“I see.” Mr. Lowell looked at her sharply. “All right. There's apt to be things I can't tell you, but ask away. I'll tell you what I can.”

Hilda had tidied her thoughts while she tidied her face and hair. “The first matter is, where is Nelka Chudzik?”

“And what makes you think I know?”

“Mr. Lowell, if you ask me a question every time I ask you one, I will never learn anything. Let us not waste time. Do you know where she is, or not?”

“You're a businesslike young woman, aren't you? All right, all right.” He held up his hand. “No more questions. Yes, I do know where she is. And no, I'm not going to tell you. I sent her off as much for her own good as for mine. She'd found out just a little more about me than was quite safe. I arranged with a cousin of mine, a respectable maiden lady, to meet her here at the hotel on the Wednesday afternoon and take her home. And as soon as I've finished with my work here, Miss Nellie'll come back safe and sound.”

Hilda nodded, trying to conceal her relief. “I was not sure, but I thought it might be something like that. Does her mother know where she is?”

“Not where, but she knows the girl's okay. At least, I let Nellie send her a letter. I guess the old woman can't read, but if she got someone to read it to her, she shouldn't be worrying.”

“The last time I saw her she was very worried indeed. I do not think she knew where Nelka was. I hope that by now someone has read her the letter. I will see to it. Now, Mr. Lowell, I must tell you that I know what you were investigating for Colonel Studebaker, and I know that you went on at least one night to the house where Miss Jacobs roomed.”

“How—”

“A boy followed you,” she said, noting with some satisfaction the man's embarrassment. “But that does not matter. Mr. Lowell, do you believe that Mrs. Schmidt's house is—er—irregular in any way?” It was one thing to use the term “bawdy house” in the bosom of her soon-to-be family, and quite another to use it to a stranger, and a man at that.

“Now, how the deuce—oh, sorry, sorry. Sorry for the language as well. I don't know how you know all these things, but the answer is yes. Mrs. Schmidt keeps a very irregular house indeed.”

“And do you believe that the matter you are investigating had anything to do with Miss Jacobs's murder?”

“I'll be hanged if I don't, but I can't make the connection. When there are nasty goings-on in a house, and then one of the girls is murdered, it's more than I can believe that the one has nothing to do with the other. But I've followed all the leads I could, all the men I could find out about who patronized that house, and they've all led nowhere.” He lifted his hands in a gesture of disgust.

“Mr. Lowell, forgive me, but I must ask you this. You were seen at the head of the alley where Miss Jacobs was killed, on the night that she was killed. Then the next morning you left South Bend so quickly you did not stop to pay your hotel bill. The police were looking for you for quite a while. They may still think you killed her.” Hilda took a deep breath. “Did you?”

“By all that's holy, girl, you've got guts! You think I'm maybe a murderer and you come and track me down and sit for a nice polite conversation in a hotel! I tell you, Pinkerton's could use a girl like you.”

“I have other plans, sir,” said Hilda primly, but her heart warmed a little just the same. It is pleasant to hear praise, and Hilda wasn't always praised for her detective instincts. “But you have not answered my question.”

“No, I didn't kill the girl. But when I found out she was dead, I skipped town as fast as I could. I reckoned I'd be a suspect, and in order to prove I wasn't I'd have to tell the police who I really was—and that didn't suit me at all. I hated to rook the hotel, but I thought the cops might be watching for me. I sent 'em the money later.”

“Yes, I know. I also know about the message that was left for you.”

“Message? I never got a message.” He looked alarmed.

“When the boy took it up to your room he found you had left. Mr. Lowell, why would someone leave you an envelope full of blank paper?”

The man began to laugh. “Oh, is that what it was? That's easy enough to explain, though the police must have found it mighty suspicious.”

“I believe they did. Please tell me what it means.”

“It's a signal among the Pinkertons. If there's more than one man working in a town, we know about it, and we look out for each other. Now the police called us in the minute they found the body, am I right?”

“I believe so.”

“Well, the men who came would have known about me, and they'd have known the situation might not be good for someone working undercover. So one of them sent me that message. It just means ‘problem—get out.' But I'd already got out, so I never saw the message, and it just turned into one more misleading piece of evidence.”

“I see,” said Hilda. “But Mr. Lowell, there is still one thing I do not see. If you do not believe any of Mrs. Schmidt's—um—customers killed Miss Jacobs, then who did?”

The court of inquiry investigating the murder…began work
today…on the theory that the murder had
criminal assault for the motive.

—South Bend
Tribune
   
January 27, 1904

 

 

 

29

T
HE PINKERTON'S MAN smacked the arm of his chair. “That's what I can't figure out. All I know is, I was in the alley that night, and it must have been right before she died. I'd followed her there, because there was something about her I didn't understand. Of course, I wasn't followin' her too close. It was a bright, moonlit night and she would've seen me.”