At five minutes to ten the next morning, Phil stepped out of the Plaza Hotel wearing a gored wool skirt of large red-and-black plaids and an emerald-green cashmere jumper in honor of the season. And with her fur-lined black carriage cape and matching muff, and a Russian sable hat to keep her ears warm, she was feeling quite up to facing the cold—and the detective sergeant.
Just a Friend stood in his normal place, a bundle of papers held safely under one arm while he hawked a single edition with the other. He was wearing a new scarf.
“Good morning, Just a Friend.”
“‘Morning, miss. He’s over by that carriage waiting for you. I told him who was the best driver, and he takes good care of his horses, too. Not like some I could name.”
“Why, thank you, Just a Friend. I can always depend on you for the best advice.”
She handed him a penny; she had learned to always keep one handy for just this purpose. Even though she knew her largesse probably got stolen from him by larger boys or men or the shadowy Clancy, she wanted to do her part for him to have a little extra to eat.
“Don’t you get too friendly with no copper, miss, can’t trust them. Not even him. They’ll lock you up for nothin’ if they have a mind to.”
She didn’t doubt it, if you were poor or homeless or had no one to advocate for you.
“They’ll do it.” He nodded sharply. “You have any trouble with him, you yell and I’ll come running.”
“Thank you, Just a Friend, and if you have any trouble with the coppers, you yell to me, and I’ll come running.”
He grinned, crumpled his free paper under his arm with the others long enough to touch his cap to her—and then dropped the penny into it, before returning the hat to his head.
The detective sergeant was standing on the sidewalk close to a carriage drawn by an old but well-groomed chestnut, which formed a convenient barricade from curious eyes. Though he hadn’t taken into account the sidewalk traffic; two ladies in full-length coats and enormous muffs tittered as they passed.
He looked up to find Phil grinning at him. Well, really the man was oblivious to his own charms, a rare and endearing quality.
“I’m so glad you could make it,” she said, holding out her hand as she came to meet him.
“How could I resist?” He helped her into the carriage, arranged the blanket over them both, and signaled the driver to drive on.
They turned immediately into the open plaza that led to the drive through the park. The trees were bare and their branches captured the sky like filigree over aquamarine. They drove past the pond and the bench where Phil and Atkins had met several times to discuss information during other cases.
She shivered. She might never see this end of the park in the same way ever again.
“Too cold?”
“Not at all.”
They were one of the few carriages in sight and had only gone a hundred feet into the park when the detective sergeant called out to the driver. “Hold up for one second, please.”
The driver reined in his horse. “Anything wrong, sir?”
“No, we just seem to have picked up an extra passenger.” Atkins pushed the lap blanket away and leaned over the back of the carriage, reemerging a moment later with a twisting, struggling being.
Phil recognized the cap immediately, then the grinning visage of Just a Friend.
“I’ll get rid of him, sir,” the driver said, and put on the brake.
“That won’t be necessary,” Atkins said. “We’re acquaintances of this inventive lad.”
The driver tapped the brim of his top hat, which had a sprig of holly tucked in the band, and pulled his coat tighter to wait.
“Now, my young jackanapes,” Atkins said, holding onto the boy’s coat collar, “I don’t believe we’re in need of your chaperonage this morning.”
“Gorn, what’s that?”
“Something we don’t need.”
Just a Friend screwed up his face, showing his displeasure in lieu of his fists, which were busy keeping him attached to the side of the carriage.
“Where did you leave your papers? Somebody’s bound to steal them while you’re dallying your morning away on a carriage ride through the park, and then you’ll catch hell.”
“No, I won’t, cuz I got ’em right here.” He let go of the carriage to reach into his jacket.
Atkins just managed to save him from a nasty fall.
“Well, get along anyways. Or I’m going to give you what for.”
“If I gotta. But don’t think that means you can go and take advantage of the lady.”
Atkins laughed, a sound that always gave Phil hope for the inner man. “I rather think that it will be the other way around, but I promise to return us both to the entrance unharmed.”
Just a Friend glanced at Phil.
“I’ll be fine,” she said. “But thank you for your quick action for my safety.”
“You sure? He ain’t put the screws to you or anything?”
“I’m sure, and he’s been a perfect gentleman,” Phil assured him.
“Okay, then. But you—” He freed one hand from the carriage long enough to shake a finger at Atkins, and this time Atkins let him slide to the ground.
He landed on his rear end. Fortunately, the coat Preswick had purchased for him was very padded.
He scrambled to his feet, frowning fiercely at the detective sergeant.
Atkins reached in his trouser pocket and flipped the boy a coin. Just a Friend snatched it out of the air, and it disappeared into his cap to keep Phil’s penny company.
“You mind your manners,” he said, and scampered back toward the park entrance.
Atkins settled back in his seat. “Drive on.”
The carriage jolted forward, and Phil burst out laughing.
All vestiges of the smile he’d been fighting disappeared. “You do realize that as insinuating as the little scamp might appear, you can’t trust him.”
That sobered her quickly enough. “Why can’t I?”
“Do I really need to explain it to you?”
“No. But I think you’re wrong about Just a Friend. He has a mission to protect me.”
“Why?”
“You don’t think I should be protected?”
“Not by a boy. And quite frankly I can’t think of anyone less in need of protecting than you.”
“Why, thank you, Detective Sergeant. You do say the kindest things.”
“So, why have I been summoned to this ‘delightful’ outing?”
Phil sighed. “Because I fancied a drive in the park with a charming companion?”
“Spare me the sarcasm and tell me the real reason.”
Phil glanced at the driver. The carriage made a turn, and Phil moved closer to the detective sergeant. It was a calculated move both to prevent the driver from overhearing anything they might say and, she had to admit, to take advantage of the coziness beneath the carriage blanket. With their heads bent toward each other, they surely looked like lovers out for a morning rendezvous.
And it was tempting. Unfortunately, he was a gentleman in all ways.
Or perhaps there were other reasons for his reticence. Reasons she’d considered before but had never asked. She knew he had no wife, that his mother was dead, and absolutely nothing else about the man. He had to be in his thirties, the perfect age of maturity, that short span of life when boys changed to men and before the men began going to seed. A lover? A mistress? Kept in a little cottage …
“Lady Dunbridge.”
“Sorry, I was taking a little flight of fancy. Isn’t it lovely?”
“If you like bare trees in the freezing cold.”
“Do you think it will snow? I think snow at Christmas is so lovely, don’t you?”
“I think it’s lovely in the country, inconvenient in the city, and I have cases piling up in my absence while we’re discussing the weather.”
“Then I will get to the point.” She reached in her handbag, which now had two additional occupants to her compact, comb, and notebook: her warning from the Black Hand and her pearl-handled derringer.
She handed him the folded note.
He frowned at her but took it and read. It seemed to take forever while the carriage traveled out of the clearing and into the drive through the trees.
Finally he looked up. “Where did you get this?”
“I found it in my pocket after bumping into a man in Union Square.”
“Rather far afield from the Plaza.”
She didn’t answer. She couldn’t very well tell him the truth—even if she knew what the truth was—and jeopardize her mission—which she as yet didn’t know the purpose of. Really, men could be so selfish.
“You think he bumped into you purposely in order to slip this into your pocket? I must say, Lady Dunbridge, usually it’s the other way around.”
She raised her eyebrows in question.
“As a rule, they lift things out, not put things in it.”
“I know that.”
“I’m sorry if he frightened you. But it’s probably some practical joke, or possibly you were mistaken for someone else.” He stopped, and the look he gave her sent a chill up her spine. “Unless perhaps there’s something you want to tell me?”
The carriage slowed, letting another carriage cross in front of them. The horse snorted, shook his head, anxious to stay on the move.
They took the left fork and drove along the green, though today it was a stark blanket of brown grasses punctuated by patches of crusted snow.
“I’m not frightened,” Phil said, and belied her statement by pulling the carriage blanket closer. Actually, she was petrified, but if she said that, she’d have to tell him the rest. Though it was becoming apparent, as they reached the inner paths of the park, that she would have to trust him with some information if she expected to get any back from him.
“There is something I feel I should tell you, but first I need to know why you were at the Times building the other day.”
“On a personal visit as a favor to the editor.”
“About the leak at the paper? Or the whereabouts of Tommy Green?”
He stilled, and for the longest time the only sound was the steady clip-clop of the horse’s hooves on the path.
She had his full attention now. It was rather daunting.
Finally he said, “How do you know about either?”
“Well, Marty—Martha Rive, whom you met in the lobby—told Bev and me that Carr Van Anda, the managing editor, was very upset about information being leaked. That he thought that whoever it was might be in cahoots—is that the word?—with one of the rival papers.”
She broke off, not quite certain how to proceed without betraying Harriet’s trust. “I was wondering if your visit might have anything to do with the story Tommy Green was working on? According to Marty, Van Anda was in an uproar when Tommy didn’t show in time for his deadline. Actually, we witnessed a bit of it when we went to pick up Marty. But—”
“Okay, that’s it.” He turned to her so abruptly that she couldn’t evade the hands that grasped her shoulders, turning her to face him. “What do you know about Tommy Green?”
“Nothing, except he was evidently working on an investigation of the recent violence around Union Square.”
“So that’s why you were at the paper, not just to have lunch.”
“I was having lunch. You can ask the maître d’ at the Knickerbocker café if I need an alibi.”
“So how did you end up at Union Square? What have you gotten yourself into?”
“Nothing that I know of.” At least nothing that she could name.
“Then why did you say that Green was working on—twice.”
Phil tried to repress a shudder but didn’t quite succeed.
“What do you know?”
She watched a muscle twitch in that wonderfully masculine jaw. It was the kind of thing a woman found intriguing, but today was too cold for that kind of temptation. Besides, she needed answers now.
He dropped his hands. “Since you refuse to answer, I ask myself, How could you possibly go to lunch and end up involved in the machinations of the Black Hand?”
“So it was the Black Hand.”
“What was?”
“Have you found Tommy Green?”
“We weren’t looking for him.” He hesitated. “But we did find him.” Again, that hesitation. “Under the docks down at Clarkson Street Pier.”
“Clarkson Street Pier? You’re sure it was Tommy Green?”
“He was identified by Carr Van Anda. He had no next of kin. It wasn’t pretty.”
“Now, that’s interesting.”
“Why?”
Phil took a breath. In for a penny … “Tommy Green may have been found at the Clarkson docks, but he wasn’t killed there. His throat was slashed at the Theatre Unique on Fourteenth Street.”
His eyes narrowed and his complexion paled ever so slightly. Not from the cold but from incipient anger. It was another of his fascinating characteristics.
“And furthermore, his body was carried away by the police in a black van. Overseen, I might add, by Charles Becker.”
The detective sergeant’s sudden intake of breath told all she had feared. Someone was attempting to hide the real circumstances of the murder of Tommy Green. And it included members of the police force. No surprise, since after a short period of reform led by Mr. Roosevelt, the New York Police Department, for the most part, had rapidly and willingly slipped back in its habitual norms of bribes, graft, and corruption.
“Who told you this?”
His voice caught the attention of the driver. “Yes, sir?”
“The lady is cold. I think you can take us back now.”
“Yes, sir.” He slowed his horse and made the turn, and soon they were trotting back to the park entrance.
“But we’re not—”
He leaned into her, his breath warm on her cheek. “Later.”
“Why, Detective Sergeant, this sounds promising.”
He was not amused.
Atkins had the driver drop them just inside the entrance of the park, and once the carriage had driven away, he led Phil over the ice-crusted path to a bench by the pond. They had met there a handful of times to exchange information, and Phil only half-jokingly referred to it as “our place.”
It was usually secluded by shade trees on three sides and the pond on the other, but today, with the branches bare and the pond frozen over, they seemed singularly exposed.
Though as Atkins was quick to point out, it also gave them the advantage of seeing anyone approach within hearing distance.
“Worried about my reputation … or yours?” Phil quipped.
“Both. If people know we meet under whatever guise—”
She barely caught the glint in his eye before it was gone.
“No one will trust us with any information,” he finished.
Phil couldn’t help but take a quick surreptitious look around. “I did think twice about telephoning you at the station. Perhaps I should have used an alias. Mrs. Dalrymple. I can be one of those terribly clingy clergy wives who always suspects someone is trying to steal her silver.”
“You need to be serious for a minute.”
“Oh, I assure you, Detective Sergeant, I’m serious. A man was killed because he was in search of the truth. I’m being threatened presumably because I was there, and the nastiest policeman I’ve ever had the bad fortune to encounter is involved. I’m deadly serious.”
“What are you talking about? You were there? You need to tell me exactly what happened.”
So she did, very careful to omit certain parts that would surely infuriate him and run her afoul of the police investigation, if there was one. “I went into the theater to watch the afternoon offerings, and sat down next to a man, who, as it turns out, was dead. It was dark, of course, but I managed to see all I needed to see. Someone screamed.” She saw no reason to bring in Harriet’s presence at this point. And not before consulting with Harriet first, if it couldn’t be helped.
“Not you.”
“Really, Detective Sergeant, I do my best to remain cool in all circumstances … though it was rather gory; the black stain across his chest flickering light and dark as if we were the picture show.”
She shuddered, regained her composure when his hand touched her shoulder before quickly moving away. “Someone calling himself the manager whisked me outside through the back door, where I found myself in the alley.” She plowed on.
“I made my way back to the street, where I arrived just in time to see Sergeant Becker step out of a black police auto and go inside. Moments later a black van stopped at the curb and took the body away. All in a matter of several minutes. Not enough time to do a creditable scene-of-the-crime investigation, if you ask me.”
“What were you doing in the theater?”
“As I said, watching—”
“The moving pictures.” He raised a disbelieving eyebrow. “What was your real reason?”
“Really, Detective Sergeant. It was a harmless pastime—or should have been.”
“Was the theater crowded?”
“No. I had taken a seat in the back row and could see plenty of empty seats.”
“Plenty of seats, and yet you chose to sit next to a stranger who happens to be dead.”
“As you say.”
“If you’ll pardon me for saying so, I don’t believe you for a moment.”
She smiled at him.
“And what happened when this unknown person screamed?”
“The manager appeared at my elbow and hurried me out the back door.”
“Just you? Not the entire house?”
“Just me.” She frowned, remembering. “Odd. I thought so at the time because everyone else was running for the front entrance. But as it turns out, it wasn’t the manager at all.”
He sat up at this news. “How do you know he wasn’t?”
Now came the tricky part: telling him what happened but not saying too much. “Because I asked the manager and it wasn’t he.”
“Let me get this straight. You sit down next to a murdered man, the manager shows you the back exit, and instead of fleeing, you return to the front of the theater in time to see Becker take the body away, then went back inside to question the manager yourself? Lady Dunbridge, this seems a bit far-fetched, even for you.”
Against her will, she winced. “Well, actually, I didn’t question the manager until the next day.”
“What? Do you have any idea of how dangerous that was?”
“Indeed, but I took Lily and Preswick with me.”
“Saints preserve us all,” he said. He swiveled to face her, looked her squarely in the face. “Please, for my sanity, if not for your own safety, stay very far away from this. These people are vicious, often incompetent, which only makes things worse. And they are, for some reason, lately emboldened.”
“Are you referring to the Black Hand?”
“Exactly how much do you know about the Black Hand?”
“I read the papers, Detective Sergeant. Did they murder Tommy Green? Because he was investigating their increasing attacks in the Union Square area?”
“I don’t know how you got yourself involved in this situation, but uninvolve yourself immediately. Don’t think that because you’re a member of the peerage or live at the Plaza that will protect you. These people are uneducated thugs. They’re violent and remorseless.”
He stood abruptly. “Now, I must get back to work, and you’re going to go back home. Read a magazine, go Christmas shopping, but do not go to Union Square again. They’ve obviously marked you. Since the note doesn’t demand money, we can hope they will let it drop. If. You. Stay. Away. Understand?”
She nodded. And she would take his advice if she could, though at this point, she didn’t know how that would be possible.
Phil paused as they passed the carriage they had just ridden in, the chestnut standing placidly by the curb waiting for its next hire. She nodded a friendly thanks to the driver, who looked blankly past her from beneath a slouch hat. Phil looked again. The carriage and horse were the same, but the top hat and holly sprig were gone—and so was their driver.
“He wasn’t very happy with me,” Phil told Lily and Preswick as she sipped a cup of strong hot coffee. “He told me to stay out of it, for all our safety, and I left him buying a paper from Just a Friend and scowling at the entrance to the Plaza as I crossed the street. And it does seem a rather daunting enemy. A widespread crime organization that operates across the country.”
“Yes, my lady,” said Preswick. “Though according to Lorenzo, it isn’t really an organization but a loosely associated bunch of petty crooks. So you never know who might be waiting for a chance to take advantage of the vulnerable, especially the new arrivals who don’t speak the language.”
“My goodness, you are a storehouse of information.”
“Thank you, my lady.”
“He warned me off,” Phil said.
“And do you intend to be warned off, my lady?”
“How can you be warned off from something when you don’t even know what it is you’re being warned about? I hate that a man was killed for merely trying to shed light on wrongdoing.
“This seems like a rather broad investigation. Perhaps this is one instance where it’s better left to the authorities.” She sighed.
“But, madam, why would Mr. X ask you to meet that reporter if he didn’t expect you to investigate?”
“I don’t think he was planning for it to go that far, Lily.”
And the reason she wasn’t quite willing to wash her hands of the situation. Why had Mr. X made his presence known but refused to enlighten her on the case? Perhaps because he was just as in the dark as she.
“But now, I’m afraid social duty calls, and I don’t dare be late to another meeting of the charity-ball committee. It’s the last one. They’ll think I’m not a serious philanthropist.” Phil raised an eyebrow. “Was that a snort I heard from you, Lily?”
Lily bent into a curtsey so quickly that Phil was afraid the floor had developed a hole beneath her feet. “Oh no, my lady,” she said primly. “A well-trained lady’s maid doesn’t snort.”
“Good to know,” Phil said, fighting not to laugh out loud. Preswick had turned away and was intently inspecting the mantel top. For dust? Or controlling a similar urge.
They’d certainly come a long way in the last few months, her little family. Certainly more of a family than she’d known in a long time.
“Besides, I’m hoping Marty Rive will be there with some news. And while I’m gone, you two will make a list of all the things we need to have the best Christmas we’ve ever had. And…” How to put this? “And we’ll enjoy it together on Christmas Day.” She hesitated. “Unless you’ve made other plans.”
They both looked at her as if she’d sprouted horns.
She felt an unfamiliar lump tighten her throat. And realized that Lily and Preswick had long ago ceased to be her servants but meant so much more. If she were to lose them, she would be thoroughly undone.
But how did one treat people when they were no longer staff but had become family?
Dressed in a boxed-pleat skirt and matching bolero jacket, and a toque of green felt crowned by a stiff pheasant feather set over a newly coifed bouffant swirl of hair, Phil set forth to the last meeting of the charity-ball committee.
She met two of the members getting out of their carriage, and they all climbed the steps of the Sloane brownstone together. They deposited coats and muffs with a footman, and Tuttle showed them into the parlor, where Mrs. Abernathy, Roz Chandler, and the assistant mayor’s wife were already sipping tea and helping themselves to savory sandwiches. But no Bev.
They’d barely stepped inside before Bev hurried into the room behind them. “Sorry not to be here to greet you. I was on the telephone with Marty. She’s going to be late, some problem at the paper, but she promises to get here as soon as possible.”
“Her father should really find her a husband before she gets herself into trouble,” Mrs. Abernathy said.
Roz opened her mouth, then closed it again. It hadn’t taken them all long to learn to ignore Mrs. Abernathy and her opinions, of which she had many. In addition to being committee chairwoman, she was one of the most influential wives in City Hall and Tammany politics.
And as Bev continued to remind them, she was also one of the richest. But not as rich as the last member who entered behind Bev in a rustle of blue silk velvet and taffeta. Imogen Trout swept in, the way she made all entrances, paused to get everyone’s attention, drawled, “Am Ah la-a-ate?” Then condescended to make herself part of the group.
She sat down next to Roz on the sofa. Each committee head made their reports, just as they had at the last meeting, which for Phil was rather a wasted effort. She was on the committee mainly for show.
Amazing that Americans were so enamored of royalty, though it was only fit, since royalty was so enamored by the Americans’ money.
Imogen began her report on the decorations of the Plaza ballroom where the ball was to be held. Convenient for Phil and certainly a feather in the committee’s cap, as the ballroom had been rented for months in advance.
“… tables will be positioned in a horseshoe facin’ the front alcove where a twelve-foot tree will be ornamented with gold…”
Phil took a surreptitious look at the mantel clock, which was nearly hidden in an abundance of holly. Where was Marty? Maybe she would have news.
“And Lady Dunbridge will lead off the ball with Mayor McClellan,” Mrs. Abernathy was saying, sending Phil a deferential look that Phil accepted with a civil smile. “We have subscriptions for four hundred and seventy patrons…” She paused to say, “Not even Mrs. Astor can boast such a number.”
Everyone smiled or tittered at her little joke. It was old news that the four hundred most prominent families was based on the number of people who could be accommodated in the elder Mrs. Astor’s ballroom.
“Poor Caroline,” she continued with just the slightest hint of malice. After all, Mrs. Abernathy’s family had been one of those first snubbed by the elite of New York, until their wealth bought them a place in the new-money society. A little tidbit Phil had learned from Bev before she’d agreed to be part of the ball. Next year she would put her clout, such that it was, toward an event that spent less and did more.
She was just about to beg a headache when the doorbell echoed.
Everyone looked toward the door. Bev popped up from her seat just as the door opened and Marty Rive burst in, unbuttoning her coat. She tossed it in Tuttle’s direction as she rushed past him.
“Oh Roz, Tommy Green is dead.”
Roz? thought Phil. How did she know the Times reporter?
“He was murdered.”
Everyone turned to Roz, who had grown as pale as paper. Her hand pressed her cheek, her eyes round and unfocused. She pushed to her feet, reached out to Marty, and swayed.
“Good Lawd,” Imogen drawled. “Somebody catch her, she’s goin’ to faint.”