Chapter 3
“Is it?”
Hannah, Brady, Jesse, and I hovered together in a basement room beneath the hospital that had been fitted out to function as a coroner’s examination room. White tiles lined the walls and covered the floor, while bare pipes ran along the ceiling and down one wall to a wide steel sink. Bare lightbulbs hung suspended from the ceiling, illuminating the enameled table in the center of the room and the cloth-draped body that presently occupied it. The coroner and Jesse had spoken together first. Then the man had folded down the sheet to expose the deceased man’s face, and left us alone.
Brady held the photograph Nanny had given me the night before. His forehead creased as though he were in pain as he glanced from the picture to the bloated, discolored face and back again. “I don’t know. I can’t say with any certainty. But . . . it’s possible, isn’t it?” He appealed to Jesse, who was several years older than himself. “Do you remember him?”
“Not well enough, I’m afraid. It’s been too long, and I was a child at the time. It’s a shame your mother isn’t here.”
Our parents—our mother and my father—were living in Paris, where my father eked out a living as an artist. “I’m sorry, Brady,” I said, not for the first time.
He shook his head and addressed his next questions to Jesse. “Have you been able to learn anything about him? Where he might have come from?”
“Not yet, but we’ll be doubling our efforts now that we know his death wasn’t an accident.” He glanced at me, a supposition plain in his expression.
“I’ll help in any way I can.” It wouldn’t be the first time I’d assisted Jesse in a murder investigation. With my Vanderbilt connections and my Newport upbringing, I was in the unique position of straddling two worlds, and to a certain extent I was welcome in both. Jesse had once admonished me not to interfere; now he not only accepted my insights, but applauded them, as long as I didn’t overstep my bounds and create more problems than I solved. “Was anything significant found on his person? Anything to give a clue as to his identity or where he came from?”
Brady grunted and turned away.
“Only the usual things men carry. A money purse, a pocket watch, a handkerchief, and a snuff box. However, there was something found tangled about his fingers.” Jesse went to a tray on the metal countertop and held up a length of blue thread. “It’s as if the victim grabbed on to something for dear life, and tore this free. There must have been some amount of struggle. Although the main wound is remarkably clean, there are small cut marks on the victim’s hands and wrists, suggesting he tried to ward off the fatal strike.”
I went closer to examine the filament. Even having been soaked in salt water, the color had remained vibrant, the texture glossy. “The lining of the killer’s cloak, perhaps?”
“An odd color for a man’s cloak, even the lining,” Jesse said. “And yet for a woman to have done this . . .”
“Or a man’s vest, perhaps?” I suggested. “Or, your killer was indeed a woman.”
Jesse laid the thread back on the counter and placed a hand on Brady’s shoulder. “Perhaps we should go.”
I couldn’t have agreed more. Hannah and I started toward the door, followed by Jesse. We stopped when we realized Brady hadn’t moved. He hadn’t torn his gaze away from that lifeless face. He seemed far away, entranced.
“Brady,” I murmured, hoping to dislodge him from his stupefaction.
“Give me a few minutes, please.”
I went back to him and placed my hand on his forearm. The intensity emanating from him frightened me a little. “What are you going to do?”
“Do? Nothing. I just want a minute or two alone with . . . it. With him.” He thrust the photograph into my hand. “Please, Em, just go.”
When I hesitated, Jesse called softly to me and beckoned with an outstretched hand. Feeling culpable and helpless, I could do nothing but comply. The three of us, Jesse, Hannah, and I, left the room and closed the door behind us.
I was never to know exactly what happened in that room between Brady and the dead man. Did my brother rant, quietly, at the father who had abandoned him all those years ago? Did it even matter to him whether or not this individual was Stuart Gale? Or whether Stuart Gale actually died in that yachting accident almost thirty years ago, or had stolen off to another part of the world without a word to his loved ones?
When he joined the rest of us upstairs, his brow had smoothed, though remnants of whatever storm had played out inside him still glowered in his eyes. “Don’t say anything,” he said to me, and with a heavy heart I heeded the caution. He offered Hannah his arm. “Must you return to work, or can you walk outside with me a bit?”
“It’s quiet today,” she replied, slipping her hand through the bend in his elbow. “Let me leave a message with the desk.”
She cast me a sympathetic look as they started off. I watched them go. “Oh, Jesse, what was I thinking?”
“You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Didn’t I? Nanny told me it was a bad idea. But I was so adamant Brady had a right to see for himself that I didn’t stop to think how something like this might affect him.”
“Brady’s a grown man, and he’s strong. Of course he’s upset. That’s only natural. I’m sure he doesn’t blame you.” We made our own way to the front door on Friendship Street. “I need to get back to the station. Can I bring you anywhere?”
“No, thank you, I have my carriage. I’m heading over to the Messenger for the rest of the morning.”
“Are you running the story?”
“Of course I am. But only what I know, no speculations.” I said this last defensively. When I took over running the newspaper for its owner, Derrick Andrews, I’d made a promise to myself to uphold the most stringent journalistic principles. Only the facts; any opinions printed in the Messenger would be on the Opinions page, and nowhere else.
“Don’t go getting your dander up,” said Jesse with a laugh. “You have a big event coming up, don’t you? Tonight? Tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow night at Crossways. Mr. and Mrs. Fish are holding what they’re calling a Harvest Festival as a way to close out the Season. For once, though, it won’t be me strolling the festivities and jotting down the details. I’m sending the Messenger’s society reporter.”
The thought cheered me a bit. While I would much rather have dispensed with the society page altogether in favor of dedicating those columns to real news, I understood the enthusiasm with which many subscribers rifled through their newspapers until they found all the latest descriptions of fashions, soirees, weddings, and journeys abroad. I couldn’t disappoint them, nor could I risk subscriptions falling off. Not if I wished to make a success of my first foray into the world of journalism management.
And not if I wished to make Derrick Andrews proud of me.
* * *
A little while later, it was with the utmost trepidation that I followed my head printing press operator, Dan Carter, into the pressroom at the very rear of the Messenger’s offices. I hadn’t needed anyone to tell me we had trouble, nor had I needed to see the dismal expression of our office manager, Jimmy Hawkins. The moment I stepped into the front office, the utter silence told me something was very wrong. The main press lay silent, its gears and rotary motionless. No steam hissed through the pipes that fed the engine. The hush enveloped me in a sense of impending failure.
I tried my best to maintain outward calm. The two assistant press operators moved away from the main—and largest—press. We had two others, but they were small and only used for last-minute inserts or late-day extras for breaking news. With sheepish expressions, they nodded their greetings to me, perhaps fearing I’d hold them responsible for this setback. “What appears to be the problem?”
“Not quite sure yet, Miss Cross.” Dan ran his hand over the upper cylinder as if comforting an ill child. “We’re working on it.”
“It just suddenly stopped working?”
“Well, it sort of petered out slowly. Didn’t notice at first. In fact I heard it before I saw it. The engine wasn’t working to capacity. You get to know these things when you work with machinery day in and day out. They’re touchy things, machines, like a woman . . . oh, sorry, Miss Cross.”
“That’s all right, Dan. Then it’s the engine?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Could be minerals from the steam have mucked up the works. The gears and such.”
“Yes, I know what the works are, Dan, thank you.” Hands on hips, I moved closer to the press and surveyed its parts, as if I could possibly detect the problem. Still, it paid to appear knowledgeable when one was in charge. Especially when one was a woman surrounded by men. “What are you doing about it?”
“Going through every bit of her, cleaning everything that could be the problem, and working our way backward to the engine and the steam lines.”
My spirits sank further. “That sounds time-consuming. Luckily, today’s paper has already gone out. But what about tomorrow’s and the Sunday edition?”
“No other way to do it, Miss Cross, except haphazardly.” He spoke with the faintest condescendence, which irked me although it didn’t surprise me. Dan’s tone, a mixture of kindness and disbelief that I could ever hope to fully understand this business, was no different than many I’d encountered since taking up journalism. I therefore gave him my attention without showing a hint of my thoughts as he went on. “Doing it that way we might get lucky, or we might miss the problem entirely.”
I sighed. “All right, then, I’ll leave you to it and pray for a miracle.”
“Good idea, Miss Cross. The Almighty listens to women’s prayers, my gran always said.”
Back in the front office, which I shared with Jimmy Hawkins, I stood by my desk and gazed out onto Spring Street. What would I do if Dan and his men couldn’t get the press running in time for tomorrow’s edition? And what about Sunday’s paper? We depended on the sales of the Sunday edition for the bulk of our income. How could I tell Derrick we’d lost an entire week’s revenue, not to mention the advertisers who would surely abandon us? How would I pay the press operators and typesetters, along with our two reporters and Jimmy besides?
“I’ve got more bad news,” Jimmy spoke up tentatively. His flattened intonations, a product of growing up in Providence, became more pronounced. “Although, not nearly as bad as the press being down.”
I regarded his wide face and broad brow and laughed softly. “Well, I guess I’m thankful for that much. What is it?” I turned back to the window.
“Two of our newsies haven’t come in today. One sent a message with his younger brother that he’s sick. I can only imagine that’s the case with the other one as well.”
“Two?” I whirled on him, causing him to pull back in his swiveling chair. “That’s half our newsie force. Who’s out there selling today’s edition?”
“Ralphie and Tom.”
“They’ll never be able to cover town on their own. Couldn’t you find anyone to fill in?”
He held up his hands. “Just go out and hire some random boys?”
“Yes. Or girls. I don’t care which.”
He eyed me askance. “Now, I understand you believe women can do pretty much anything men can do, and for some things, I’d say you were right. But you can’t have little girls approaching strangers on the street and trying to sell them things.”
“Tell that to the countless little girls on the streets of Lower Manhattan selling everything from flowers to fruit to fish.” I didn’t add that some of them also sold themselves, as I had learned during the year I’d spent living there. New York’s social ills were another matter entirely and besides, my argument wasn’t with Jimmy. It was with several tons of iron and steel in the back room. “Sorry, you’re right. Let me make a telephone call or two and see if I can’t rustle up a couple of enterprising young men. But first, is Ethan here?”
Jimmy nodded and I strolled back to our tiny newsroom, much like the one I had once shared with another reporter when I worked for the Newport Observer. Here, besides myself, we employed two reporters, Ethan Merriman and Jacob Stodges. The pair each had the luxury of his own desk, but shared a typewriter and a telephone. But neither of them spent much time here. Rather, they searched Newport and the rest of Aquidneck Island high and low for interesting news. Or, on slow weeks, any news at all.
Jacob was nowhere to be seen but Ethan sat tapping away at the typewriter. A bright young man two years my junior, he had spent a year at Yale before deciding he’d rather write words than study them. And, as Jimmy had admitted moments ago that a woman could do pretty much whatever a man could do, Ethan proved the opposite to be true as well. While Derrick had originally hired a female society reporter, she left suddenly and Ethan had answered the advertisement several weeks ago with such enthusiasm Derrick hadn’t the heart to turn him away. And a good thing, too, as Ethan’s columns were as popular as mine ever were.
I leaned in the doorway and knocked on the jamb to catch his attention. His tapping ceased abruptly and he looked up, the overhead light gleaming on his heavily oiled hair. “You’ll be at Crossways tomorrow night,” I said rather than asked.
“I’m looking forward to it.” He sat back with a grin. “Not only is this the last big to-do of the season and the mamas’ last hope of arranging marriages for their darlings before winter sets in, it’s also going to be my first brush with royalty.”
I shook my head, a rueful smile on my lips. He referred, of course, to Mrs. Fish’s guest of honor for the Harvest Festival, Prince Otto of Austria, nephew of the Austro-Hungarian emperor, Franz Joseph. Though Otto was born on the wrong side of the blanket, his father had acknowledged him, and after his father died, Franz Joseph had legitimated Otto and given him the courtesy title of prince. The thing of it was, his attendance at the ball was supposed to be a surprise, but somehow all of Newport knew of it. “I hope you’ll have a chance to get close to him. As a Hapsburg on his father’s side and a Rothschild on his mother’s, he’ll be surrounded by hopeful mamas all evening.”
“I’m surprised you don’t want to cover this one yourself.” He suddenly looked worried, and perhaps wished he could call back his words.
“Very tempting.” I pretended to consider, only to laugh at his openly perplexed expression. “Don’t worry, Ethan. I’ve quite had my fill of royalty and pseudo royalty. I fully trust you with this one.”
His relief was palpable, but perhaps before I could change my mind, he switched subjects. “I sure hope they get the press running again soon.”
“So do I.” I gestured at the typewriter. “What are you typing up?”
“Yesterday’s luncheon at the Golf Club.”
“Ah.” How many of those types of events had I covered through the years? I didn’t fret for an instant over missing this one at Crossways. “And how did it go?”
“Splendidly,” was his animated reply. “Your cousin, Mrs. Whitney, attended the luncheon with her husband. They sure look a happy couple. Mrs. Whitney asked how you were doing with the Messenger. I told her ‘splendidly.’ ”
Splendid seemed to be one of his favorite words. “Thank you for that, Ethan. My relatives mean well, but I believe they secretly hope I’ll make a mess of things here so I’ll finally settle down and marry.”
* * *
The next day, I found reason to regret not having wangled an invitation to Crossways after all. Not that I would have taken Ethan’s place in reporting on the fête; I wouldn’t have had the heart to take away an opportunity he had fully earned these past few weeks. But Jesse had telephoned to say he’d found no clues yet as to the identity of the Spouting Rock victim. I had termed him a gentleman based on his clothing. If so, it was possible someone among the Four Hundred, gathering for tonight’s festivities, might have information about him, or even haphazardly comment on an absent friend or loved one.
I arrived at the Messenger that morning to good news, at least partially. Dan Carter had discovered the glitch with the press. “Appears someone spilled an entire jar of ink into the engine. Gummed up the works. We’ve been cleaning since before sunup with alcohol and a fine-tooth comb, you might say.”
“And it’s working?” I could hardly contain my eagerness.
“Don’t you worry, Miss Cross. We’ll have that press rolling in no time.”
I didn’t like to ask my next question, but I felt as the person in charge, it was my responsibility to learn exactly what had happened. “Spilling that much ink, and on vital equipment, was terribly careless. Do you know who did it, Dan?” I held my breath, wondering what I would do about the matter. I certainly didn’t wish to fire anyone this soon into my tenure as editor-in-chief. Perhaps a stern warning would suffice.
“Nobody’s owning up, but in my opinion, it’s not the sort of thing either of my assistants would do, nor one of the typesetters either.”
“What are you saying?”
“If I were you, Miss Cross, I’d call in the police. Maybe have that detective friend of yours take a look at our doors and windows. I took a quick peek myself and I didn’t notice anything odd, but I’d stake my life that someone who doesn’t work for the Messenger did this.”
The notion unnerved me. “Was anything stolen?”
“Not that I’ve noticed. Yet.”
This new possibility of an intruder appealed to me even less than the alternative, that of a careless accident. I couldn’t imagine who would deliberately do this, not even someone from a competing newspaper. Even in a business as ruthless as journalism could be, there were codes of honor. Unless it had been someone who simply objected to a woman as editor-in-chief and wished to see me fail. If so, that widened the scope of possible culprits considerably.
At least the press would soon be up and running, and today’s full edition, though late, would go out. And when I’d arrived earlier, Jimmy had informed me one of my newsies had recovered from his ailment and reported to work today. Perhaps the inked engine was an isolated incident.
Jesse wasn’t at the police station when I telephoned, but I gave my report to an officer I knew, an old friend.
“Seeing as it’s you, Emma, I’ll try to get someone there as soon as possible, but with nothing stolen the chief won’t see this as particularly urgent.”
I saw his point. My gummy press wasn’t going anywhere, and with no forced entry that any of us could find, the police wouldn’t have much to go on. They’d probably term it an accident or a prank and tell us to make sure the doors and windows were locked at night.
Later at my desk, as the accounts receivable and payable figures began to blur, I turned my thoughts once more to the Spouting Rock victim. Now that we knew he hadn’t fallen overboard, but rather was killed on land, it was likely he might have been seen in Newport recently.
I considered, also, the time frame of the death. It could only have happened between nightfall two days ago and the morning the servants found him. That would have been Wednesday night. Too many people visited Bailey’s Beach and the Cliff Walk for him to have been lying on those rocks longer than that and not been seen. There had been a soiree at the Bailey’s Beach clubhouse before a performance at the opera house Wednesday night. He couldn’t have been killed while people were coming or going from that, or the killer would have risked being seen in the act. Ethan had covered the event. I needed to consult with him about when the party had started and ended, for that might narrow down the time of death further still.
Next I pondered where the victim might have been just prior to his death. His clothing, light of fabric and color, suggested daywear, unsuitable for an evening gathering or the opera—so he had not been part of those activities. They were suitable for an afternoon at the Casino watching tennis, perhaps, or a picnic, or . . . a luncheon at the golf club.
Retrieving the photograph I still carried in my handbag, I hurried into the newsroom, hoping to find Ethan. Whether the Spouting Rock victim was Stuart Gale or not, the resemblance was remarkable and the image in the old wedding photograph might spark a memory in Ethan of having seen him at the golf club luncheon. To my vast disappointment, the room lay empty and I remembered that he would be preparing to go to Crossways later.
When I arrived home that evening, Nanny had a message for me. “Ethan Merriman telephoned a little while ago in a bit of a panic. His cart threw a wheel and he has no way to get to Crossways tonight.”
When I stared blankly at her, she grew concerned. “Emma, did you hear? Are you unwell?”
“No,” I said wearily. I knew Ethan drove a pony cart and lived in the north end of town, beyond the hospital. “I’m just wondering what else can go wrong. First the printing press, then my newsies missing work, and now this. It’s too much for coincidence, Nanny. Someone is deliberately trying to thwart me.”
“Who would do such a thing? Carts are often breaking down, especially with our rocky, bumpy roads. How many times have you had to have the carriage wheels mended or replaced?”
“Yes, I suppose you’re right,” I concurred, but only outwardly. “I suppose it’ll have to be me at Crossways tonight. Either that or we don’t run a society column tomorrow.” And yet, I immediately brightened, remembering that I’d now have the opportunity to discover for myself if anyone there tonight knew the Spouting Rock victim. “Nanny, come help me pick out something to wear, won’t you?”