“Lady Dunbridge, are you going to tell me the name of this mistress before we reach your hotel? Or do you expect me to guess?”
“I’ll tell you when we get to the lady’s house.”
“Oh no, I think I can handle this without you.”
“Evidently she’s a very prominent member of society.”
He expelled a deep sigh and dropped his head back on the seat. “Are you trying to tell me I should not pursue this?”
“Probably not if you care for your job. Not that I think that will stop you. I don’t know the lady in question. But she’s the widow of a very prominent clergyman.”
“Oh God.”
She suppressed a laugh. “You do seem to pull these sticky assignments.”
“On purpose. I’m one of the few detectives who can hold my own in a drawing room, and they hope I’ll screw up so they’ll have a reason to fire me.”
She stopped laughing. “That must be stressful.”
“All in a day’s work.”
“Well, Gwen was reluctant to get involved. It is rather a difficult position. I would go myself but I don’t know the lady.”
“Thank you, but I believe I can handle this one.”
“You mean you want me to wait on the sidewalk to help you up after the butler throws you out?”
“I mean I’m dropping you by your hotel and will visit the lady myself.”
“She won’t let you in, any more than Mrs. Sheffield would. And she has so much more to consider, though being a widow, she should feel free to act as she likes. But of course, there is that terrible man and his Society.”
“Anthony Comstock and the Society for the Suppression of Vice?”
“Yes, that’s the one. I can’t imagine that you actually put up with his outrageous strictures. Sick individual. Bev told me he once visited a whorehouse over fifteen times, just to make sure there was illicit behavior going on. Idiot.”
Atkins snorted. “I beg your pardon, but you do have a way of surprising me.”
“Why, Detective Sergeant, what a lovely compliment. I suggest you have the driver take us to the corner of Thirty-Seventh and Park and wait for our return.”
“Just give me her name and address.”
“I’m afraid her name and address have slipped my mind. You’ll have to ask Mrs. Sheffield if she can remember.”
“One day you’re going to push me too far.”
Phil doubted it. John Atkins was as strong and honest a man as she had ever met. And one who as yet had never let his composure slip.
He gave the driver the new directions and a few minutes later they were standing on the corner of Thirty-Seventh and Park.
“You needn’t wait,” he told the driver; the driver nodded and drove away.
“I suppose you have your reasons for sending the auto away?”
“Yes,” he said. “Now, which way do we go?”
“I believe it’s this way.” Phil began to walk east. It was a lovely street lined with stately townhouses. Trees, now nearly leafless, were planted at equal intervals in square plots filled with ivy. They passed several brownstones until they came to a lovely Beaux Arts row house, its light limestone façade banded by rows of sculpted waves separating each of the three stories. On the ground floor, tall French windows opened to a small cast-iron balcony.
“I must say religion seems to be flourishing in Manhattan.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, eyeing her suspiciously.
“This is the home of Mrs. Ida Kidmore-Young.”
Atkins groaned.
“Is she terribly respectable?”
“Terribly. Her husband was one of the most respected deans of one of the largest churches on the east side.”
“Oh dear,” Phil said. A movement in an upstairs window caught her eye. She looked up to see the faces of several young girls pressed to the panes looking down. Phil smiled and they quickly disappeared from view.
“Either His Reverend Kidmore-Young was very virile or we may not be visiting Sheffield’s mistress, but his abbess.”
Atkins cut off an expletive in the nick of time. “Perhaps I should speak with her alone.” Atkins reached into his breast pocket.
“Stop it. If you’re just going to storm in and arrest them all, we’ll never learn anything. Perhaps you should wait outside.”
Atkins knocked on the door, and it was immediately opened by a large, dark-skinned butler, who managed to dwarf the impressive figure of the detective sergeant.
Phil stepped in front of Atkins before he could reveal his identity. “I’m Lady Dunbridge and this is—”
“Oh, I know who he is.”
“We’ve come to call on Mrs. Kidmore-Young,” Phil continued. “We seem to have lost one of her husband’s parishioners.”
The butler grinned. “I’ll see if Madam is receiving.” He shut the door in their faces.
“Well, I must say, I’ve never been left waiting on a stoop before.”
“Welcome to New York, Lady Dunbridge.” Atkins was trying not to smile or laugh. Phil was certain he was glad to see her comeuppance. Never mind, she would make a convert of him in the end. Convert? Too much religion for one afternoon.
The door opened again.
“This way, my lady,” the butler said not without a tinge of amusement. He frowned at the detective sergeant but allowed him to pass.
He led them through a high entryway, into a parlor overly stuffed in the manner of the late Victorian style. Phil shuddered at the excess.
“Madam will be with you shortly.” The butler left them to the dim light of the room.
Atkins went to peruse the portrait over the unlit fireplace. A man in the robes and red sash of ecclesiastical hierarchy.
“The good reverend?” Phil surmised.
The door opened and a tall woman entered. She was dressed in a tweed morning dress, buttoned at the throat, but whose tailoring suggested an hourglass figure. Her hair was pulled back at the nape of her neck. Her face was pale, made even paler by the brilliant blue of her eyes, which Phil was convinced held a sparkle of amusement.
“Lady Dunbridge, you must forgive Daniel, he thought you were … well, let’s just say some of my callers use all sorts of nom de theatre.
“And you are Detective Sergeant Atkins. Won’t you both be seated?” She gestured to a curved plush sofa, then sat across from them in a high-backed chair. “Detective Sergeant, I’ve heard you are a fair man.”
“I try to be.”
“I understand that you are here in search of a missing person. I’m afraid I’ll be of little help to you. I am a lonely widow and don’t get out much in the world.” She addressed this little speech to the detective sergeant but she shot a curious glance toward Phil.
Phil took the cue. “Mrs. Kidmore-Young, please. We mean you no trouble. But an accident has occurred and we have been unable to reach Mr. Isaac Sheffield. It’s important that he contact us as soon as possible.”
The slightest look of alarm crossed her face.
Atkins cleared his throat. “He has not appeared at his place of business in two days and his wife has not seen him.”
“Ah, did Loretta send you here?”
“She gave me your name,” Phil admitted.
“Foolish woman. Is the earl still alive, Lady Dunbridge? You must forgive me, I don’t follow the English peerage too closely.”
It was said without irony, just a statement of fact, but it did take Phil aback.
“No, he died nearly two years ago. I’m a dowager and living in New York now.”
“It was not a happy marriage?”
Phil forced herself not to look at the detective sergeant. She was surprised to become the subject of the interrogation. She laughed, slightly forced, but not bad under the circumstance. “I’m afraid the whole world knows that it was not.”
“Those marriages seldom are. Isaac Sheffield’s marriage is not a happy one.”
“So he came here?”
“Yes, not to see me in the way poor Loretta suspects. Not entirely.”
“Not to meet you but meet his mistress?”
She nodded slightly
“Une maison de rendez-vous?”
“As you say.” She looked at Atkins. “I do nothing wrong here, merely provide a salon for gentlemen and ladies to dine and converse and snatch a few hours away from their sometimes mundane, sometimes hellacious, lives. If they do more, it is none of my business.”
“Pardon me for saying so, but you run a whorehouse.”
“You’re mistaken, Detective Atkins. I hire people to cook, clean, and wait at table. They are safe in my employ from unwanted advances, even from wanted advances.”
“And what about the young girls we saw upstairs? I imagine some of them are underage.”
“I imagine most of them are. They live here. I house, clothe, and educate them. I do not use them. Though perhaps you cannot understand that.”
“Explain it to me then.”
Phil sat back to watch this battle of the wills.
“My husband was a proud man, a just man, a godly man, though perhaps a bit didactic. He served God all his life and all he got was a heart attack and an early grave. And when it came to the support of his wife and children, the Church conveniently developed a case of amnesia.
“Fortunately, I’m from a wealthy family. Wives of established clergymen generally are. It never occurred to them that I would need his pension. But I did. My children did. I put a word in an ear or two but they laughed me off, and said Herbert wished to have his pension returned to the Church for good deeds.
“Fortunately the house was mine. And I’ve been able to keep it by my own ingenuity for the sake of myself and my girls. I’ve hurt no one in the process and have managed to provide for a few.
“Yes, Detective Sergeant, my girls—three of my own, and at the moment four others. There have sometimes been more and sometimes fewer, but I give them a chance for a life outside drudgery or worse, and I’ve done it without defiling them, in the way you are forgiven for assuming they might be. Can you say that for your righteously indignant purveyors of morality?”
Atkins looked her straight in the eye. “Unfortunately not usually.”
“At least you are honest. My husband was the head of his congregation, but I also felt a calling, if not from God, at least from Justice, herself.”
“And have you been successful?” Phil asked, genuinely interested in the answer.
“There have been a few who didn’t stay. But all in all I won’t be afraid to meet my maker when the time comes.”
“And was Mr. Sheffield and his companion here night before last or anytime since then?”
“No, Detective Atkins. He wasn’t.”
“Are you sure?”
“But of course. My dinners are very exclusive, very private, and never at the same time.”
“And very expensive?”
The little nod of the head. “As you say.”
“And before that, when was the last time you saw him?”
She stretched her hand over to a round carved table and picked up an old-fashioned bell. Rang it. The door opened immediately and the butler entered.
“Daniel, ask Cylla to bring the guest book.”
Daniel flashed the detective a quick look, but bowed and backed out of the room.
A few minutes later, a girl entered carrying a mahogany leather-bound ledger. She had long brown ringlets pulled back by a simple blue ribbon. A calico dress, stylish but not ornate. A child still.
“Thank you, Cylla.”
The girl curtseyed and turned to leave, and Phil saw that a scar cut the length of one side of her face.
Phil heard Atkins’s slight intake of breath. For herself, Phil’s breathing had stopped altogether. Such a lovely face marred so hideously. And yet the girl didn’t seem self-conscious at all.
When the door closed behind her, Ida opened the book. Ran her finger down the page, turned to the next page, and stopped. She looked up. “Cylla came to me four years ago. She was ten; three of the older girls had gone to the market and they saved her from a ruthless pimp. They managed to get her away, but she nearly bled to death before they got her here.
“They were afraid to ask for help along the way.” She leaned forward suddenly. “Do you know what it is to fear like that, Detective Atkins? Or you, Lady Dunbridge? I don’t and I never want any girl to have to fear like that again.
“I provide a place of solace for a few girls and a few wealthy, unhappy gentlemen. There is no commerce between them. Arrest me if you must. But I will tell you this, you will be doing justice a disservice.”
“I have no intention of interfering, if indeed there is nothing illegal going on in this house.”
Mrs. Kidmore-Young laughed sharply. “And will you be the judge?”
“I am merely the instrument of the law. And I hope I uphold those laws with a sense of compassion.”
“I hope you do, too, Detective Sergeant.” She looked back at the ledger. “He was here last Thursday. I have not seen nor talked to him since.” She riffled ahead in the ledger, flipped back. “And he has scheduled a dinner for the first Thursday of next month. A holiday dinner. Now, if you have no further questions…”
“And will you divulge the name of the woman he meets?”
She lifted her chin. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you.”
“Or won’t?”
“Can’t. I told you I was discreet. I don’t know which ladies they bring. As long as they are ladies, I don’t care.”
She stood, signaling that the interview was over. “When I see Isaac, I will tell him you wish to speak with him, but when he returns I’m sure his place of business will inform him.”
“Mrs. Young. A man is dead; no one, not Mr. Sheffield’s wife or his business seem to know where he is. Or if something has happened to prevent him from returning.”
Ida pressed her hand to her chest. “Dead? Who?”
Atkins’s jaw tightened. He wasn’t going to tell her. Phil didn’t see why not. It would be in every newspaper by tonight. She was surprised is wasn’t already.
“His associate Perry Fauks,” Phil said into the silence.
If Mrs. Young’s face could grow paler, it did in that moment. She reached for the bell. Daniel appeared so quickly that he must have been waiting just outside the door.
“Daniel will show you out.”
They had no choice but to go.
They went down the steps and Phil couldn’t resist looking up at the second-floor windows. One of the girls was back. And waved shyly. Phil thought she recognized Cylla, before Atkins took her arm and led her down the sidewalk.
“Maison de rendez-vous?” He stared at her. “How do you know these things?”
Phil laughed. “I’m a woman of the world. But I dare say you’d be amazed at what many of your sequestered wives and mothers actually know.”
“I don’t have a wife and my mother is dead.”
“Oh, I am sorry … about your mother. There’s still help for the other.”
“Why, Lady Dunbridge, are you proposing?”
“Ha. Not if you’re talking about marriage; that is one thing I will never do again. And alas, you are too respectable to do anything else. But if I wanted a husband, you are exactly what I’d choose: upright, honest, moral…”
“And terribly dull…”
“Not necessarily…?”
She caught the glint in his eye.
“But I’m not looking for a husband.” She glanced up at him through her lashes. “So where do we go from here?”
“I’m going back to the station. I suggest you get ready for whatever ball, soirée, or entertainment you have planned for this evening.”
Not exactly what she had in mind, but … “Are you going to arrest her?”
“Do you see any reason why I should?”
“No, but your mere presence could destroy her reputation without her doing any wrong.”
“Then I suggest you invite yourself to tea and find out who his mistress is.”
Phil stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “Good heavens. Are you asking me to investigate?”
“I wouldn’t presume.” They started walking again.
“She won’t give the name of his mistress away, even to me,” Phil said. “Her survival depends on her discretion. Something women understand all too well.”
“Including you?”
“My passions have led me into some dangerous waters.”
He quirked one side of his mouth. “Our passions generally do.”
They’d come to the end of the block and Atkins stopped her. “I believe there is a taxi stand on Thirty-Ninth Street.”
“Why did you send the driver away?” she asked.
He inhaled and his nostrils flared, as she had noticed he did when exasperation was about to get the better of him.
“Never mind then.”
“I was loaned the car for the visit to the Pratts so as not to cause alarm arriving in a police wagon.”
“But not for cavorting with countesses?”
“Something like that. Though I’m hoping the driver didn’t recognize you. I think he’s more of a Racing Daily man than Society News. But also I have some other business I want to discuss.”
“Without it getting back to your superiors?”
“I am not an underhanded man.”
“I’m perfectly aware of that, Detective Sergeant. What would you like to discuss?”
They began walking along Park Avenue.
“I’ve talked to the servants and as expected got nothing. None of them were upstairs after the last time Perry was seen alive.”
“Not even the personal servants?”
“They say not.” He held up his hand. “Of course, the few ones that admitted waiting on their employers say they saw nothing.”
“And the murder weapon?”
“We’ve searched the laundry room and Mr. Fauks’s room. And the servants’ quarters. It’s procedure.”
“Naturally,” she said. “Anyone with a brain would not have hidden it in those places. And there are plenty of knives around: the kitchen, the scullery, the butler’s pantry … But surely not one that thin and narrow.”
“A few. A boning knife is thin, but too flexible to cut through fabric and…” He trailed off.
Phil made a mental note to add the study of knife types to her growing lexicon of investigatory learning. As a member of British peerage she was only required to know how and when to use the many implements in a formal place setting. Never anything that belonged in the kitchen. But perhaps Preswick …
“I’m sorry, Detective Sergeant. You were saying?”
“I said that Mr. Pratt has balked at giving me free rein, and my superiors backed him up. Because of the recent financial panic and the standing of Luther Pratt in the banking community, they would like to gloss over the matter as quickly as possible. So much so that they’re perfectly willing to pass it off as a burglary.”
“Is anything missing?”
“Not that anyone has said or noticed.”
“And the topaz? It’s quite valuable and if it fell from a larger set, a parure for example. A set of—”
“I know what a parure is.”
“I beg your pardon. One never knows.”
“That a policeman might know these things?”
“A gentleman,” she corrected. “Gentlemen seldom pay attention to ladies’ accessories.”
He barked out a laugh. “You can thank my Investigative Techniques professor.”
“Professor? I thought policemen learned on the job and worked their way through the ranks.”
“Generally they do.”
They’d come to the corner and Atkins held her elbow until a wagon passed, then ushered her across the brick paving stones of the street. It was obvious he wasn’t going to say more about himself and she was running out of time—she could see the line of taxis at the end of the next block.
“I’m certain that Luther Pratt wants to find the truth,” she said.
“Most people do. As long as it doesn’t affect themselves or their families and doesn’t create a scandal.”
“You think it’s one of the family.”
“I don’t surmise. I follow the evidence.”
She took his point. He was the professional and she was not.
“And they’ve been given permission to all quit the city for a house party this coming weekend. A house party,” he repeated in disgust. “Out of my jurisdiction and out of my hands unless they all deign to return.”
“That didn’t stop you before.”
“The Tenderloin is not the Gold Coast of Long Island.”
“No,” she agreed. “You need someone undercover.”
“What?”
“Remember the first day I met you?”
“Yes. Over Reggie Reynolds’s body.”
“I thought you were a bum. But you told me you were investigating something ‘undercover.’”
His eyes narrowed. “I’m afraid my superiors will not allow access to Mr. Bennington’s home in that capacity. Besides, the family already knows who I am.”
“True,” she said. “But I’m going as myself. A perfect under the cover.” She smiled triumphantly.
“A perfect ‘cover.’ But no.”
“You just said it would be perfect.”
“But not for you.”
“Are you saying the police will prevent me from attending the house party?”
“You know that’s not what I’m saying. We don’t use civilians in that way. That is not how the police department works. At least not in New York City.”
“Of course it is. And you’re not even subtle about it. You often depend on a—I believe the word is ‘snitch,’ is it not? I will be your snitch.” She had one-upped him there. She knew he wouldn’t condone her actions, but he couldn’t really prevent her. But would he take whatever information she gathered, knowing it wasn’t gathered by the police proper? Time would tell. She had no intention of letting this opportunity to help go by.
They reached the taxi stand without speaking further. Took the ride uptown to the Plaza in silence. When the taxi stopped he handed her out.
“Will you come in for tea? The tearoom at the Plaza is delightful and neither of us has had lunch.”
He breathed out a laugh. “Some other time perhaps. I have to fill out my report.”
“And you’ll keep me abreast of any progress in the investigation?”
“Something tells me, it will be the other way around.”
“Perhaps.” She smiled, nodded slightly. “Good day, Detective Sergeant.”
She started to get out, remembered the scrap of paper in her bag she’d been slipped at the theatre. “I almost forgot. Do you know anything about something or someone called Morse and Heinze?”
“Not offhand, why?”
“Someone suggested I mention them to you.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know his name.” She smiled brightly. “A ‘snitch,’ I imagine. Adieu, Detective Sergeant.”
She hurried across the sidewalk toward the hotel entrance and saw the shoeshine man from the day before standing near the front doors.
Ridiculous, surely she wasn’t being watched. There was only one way to find out. She glanced quickly around to make sure the detective’s taxi had pulled away, then headed straight toward him, but as Douglas opened the door for her, he slipped inside using the far door.
She hurried after him; surely one of the bellmen would stop him. Street vendors were not allowed inside the Plaza. But when she reached the lobby she saw him disappear around the corner of the main lobby.
Egbert tipped his cap to her, expecting her to take the lift, but she hurried after the elusive man. But when she reached that section of the corridor, he was nowhere to be seen. She looked around, caught the slight whiff of tobacco that proved he had been there. She moved more slowly down the corridor past the gentlemen’s bar and looked inside.
No shoeshine man, but plenty of cigar smoke.
He must be heading toward the Fifty-Eighth Street exit. She walked more quickly, looked into the restaurant. No sign of the man. When she reached the entrance to the tearoom, she hesitated. She wasn’t going to find him, she was hungry, and the glass dome of the tearoom cast a welcoming spray of color over the tables and chairs and potted palms.
She was about to give up the chase for a table in the tearoom, when a small woman, wearing a dark dress and a wide-brimmed hat, heavily veiled, exited.
Surely not. Not even Mr. X could create such a transformation as that. And not that quickly. Could he?
The woman tucked her head, and fairly ran down the corridor. Several men who had been lounging in the hallway stood up and hurried after her.
Hunger forgotten, Phil went in pursuit. She overtook the woman as she reached the gentlemen’s bar. Grabbed her by the elbow and spun her around.
“Just what are you up to now?” she demanded. And stared down at a face she knew very well.
“Good heavens. Daisy?”
Daisy Greville, Countess of Warwick, the most beautiful woman in England, and budding socialist, stared back at her. “Phil? Phil Amesbury?”
“What are you doing here?” they asked simultaneously.
“I’m trying to elude those vultures,” Daisy said. “Newspapermen. They hound me everywhere. Do you know of a back entrance?”
“I know of something better. This way.” Phil took hold of Daisy’s elbow and they raced across the marble floor to where Egbert waited by the open elevator door.