They spent the next hour trying to decipher Tommy’s handwriting and reorganizing his notes, which consisted of scraps of typing paper, brown wrapping paper, the margins of newspapers, and smaller pages from a pocket notebook. It wasn’t easy.
Even Marty had trouble deciphering some of them. But by the time the sun appeared in the east window, they were bleary-eyed from trying.
“I suggest we take a break,” Phil said.
Marty glanced at the clock. “Lord. It’s only four hours before I have to be at the Children’s Aid luncheon.” She pushed up from her chair, braced her hands on the table, and looked over the stacks of paper.
“Both the Black Hand, and the courthouse fiasco. Tommy was really steamed about that leak. But why would he put it in with his Black Hand notes? And what about these others?” She moved several miscellaneous pages so they were aligned in a row. “Notes to Harriet. They don’t seem to mean anything. Just instructions about typing.”
“And where are the notes she typed?” Phil asked.
“She’d return them to Tommy for final okay.”
“So no one else would see them before he wrote the article?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Then where are they?”
Marty looked around the table like they might magically appear. Flipped through several sheets. “They’re not here.”
“So either he hid them somewhere else?”
“Where? There is no other place.”
“Or the miscreant found them and destroyed them and thinks he’s safe.”
“Or,” Marty said, “Tommy destroyed them himself to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands.”
“Then what was he going to pass on to me?”
Marty shrugged. “His notes. These go back several months. Of course, I’m probably the only one who can decipher them and actually understand what they mean.”
“I wouldn’t count on that,” Phil said. Surely her people had experts trained in deciphering codes and bad handwriting.
Phil picked up a sheet of paper. “What do you think these are? A whole list of numbers. Could they be a code for finding the missing pages?”
“It doesn’t sound like Tommy.” Marty frowned at the paper. “They seemed to fall in patterns of twos, ones, and threes separated by a dash mark.”
“You know Tommy’s work,” Phil said. “What do they look like to you? A combination to a safe? A date? No, that doesn’t make sense, unless … could it be a kind of shorthand for date and time? Day and month? What else?”
Marty huffed out a sigh. “I don’t know. My brain seems to have shut down. And I barely have time to get to the paper to get in my copy for the charity ball, which I still have to write—wearing my evening dress; it won’t be the first time—then get home to dress and make the luncheon by noon.”
“You forgot about sleep.”
“Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow is Christmas,” Phil pointed out.
“If I don’t show for the family dinner, even my mother will disown me.” She looked at the papers, then to Phil.
“Don’t worry,” Phil said. “I won’t do anything without you. I am going shopping, then spending a lovely Christmas Eve at home.” Probably sleeping. “This information isn’t going anywhere, and I doubt that we will discover the name of the killer in these sheets of paper. There is research to be done. And we need to find out what these numbers are before we go any further.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“I am.” The only thing Phil worried about was what Harriet knew or didn’t know, and that would have to keep until she returned—if she returned.
Marty’s eyes had closed. If it was possible to sleep standing up, Marty Rive had reached that point.
“Preswick, please fetch Miss Rive’s coat and Christmas box and see that she gets into a taxi.”
Marty waved her away, but her hand was limp.
“You’re not going out onto the street, alone, especially not in that gown.”
“Not a taxi. I’m a—”
“Pain in my derriere,” Phil finished. “You can pay me back later.”
Preswick had already gone for her things.
“The notes.”
“Will be safely secured in my safe.”
“Don’t dare try to pull a fast one.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it. I can’t read his writing,” Phil said. “Now, go home.”
“Huh.” Marty allowed Preswick to help her into her coat. Lily returned with the box of presents, sans the briefcase, which lay on the floor by Phil’s chair.
They both accompanied Marty downstairs.
“I’ll be back,” she said as the door closed behind them.
“Merry Christmas,” Phil called, somewhat belatedly, and went back to studying the forest of papers before her. She stared at the one sheet of numbers until they swam before her eyes and coalesced into an undifferentiated blur.
“Madam. Time for bed.”
Phil stirred, blinked, and Lily’s drawn face came into focus.
“Time for all three of us to see our beds. Did she get off safely?”
“Yes, though she is very stubborn.”
“Yes. I hope she doesn’t go off on her own quest for vengeance.”
“What if she only told us half of what she was reading?” Lily asked as she led Phil down the hall to bed, though who was leading whom was unclear. “Maybe she’s holding out on us.”
“Possibly,” Phil agreed. “But she’ll be busy through Christmas Day, then I think I’ll have Bev invite her to join us at Holly Farm for Boxing Day.”
The clock was striking two and sunlight was streaming through the window when Phil roused from a deep and much needed sleep. She sat bolt upright. Had they remembered to lock away the notes before going to bed?
She could hear Lily rummaging about in the dressing room. “Lily!”
Lily appeared in the doorway. “Did I waken you?”
“No. But the notes.”
“Mr. Preswick locked them in the safe before we went to bed.” Lily stifled a yawn.
“How long have you been up?” Phil asked.
“A while…”
“Well, you and Preswick are both to take the rest of the day off.”
“But we’re taking tomorrow and Boxing Day off.”
“I insist. But after you bring me something to wear.”
Lily ducked back into the dressing room.
By the time Phil appeared at the table, breakfast had arrived and Preswick was pouring coffee for her. A half hour later, she took the elevator downstairs for her final search for the latest Sherlock Holmes novel.
Mr. Norris, the concierge, was at his desk, and she stopped for his advice.
“Have you tried Brentano’s?”
“No. Do you think they might have a copy?”
“It is getting rather late for something so popular, but you never know.” Mr. Norris wrote the address down on a hotel card and walked her outside and to the taxi stand.
“Brentano’s,” Mr. Norris told the driver. “Thirty-one Union Square at Sixteenth Street.”
Phil started to put away the card, then looked at it: 31 UNION SQUARE, BET. 15–16.
The numbers on Tommy’s pages floated to her brain. Was it possible the numbers were not dates, not combinations, but addresses? She tried to recall the numbers. Was tempted to turn back to make sure, but priorities overcame impatience and she continued on her way.
She was still pondering this possibility when the driver stopped in front of a corner building with striped awnings protecting the display of books in the windows. The address was printed large across the front—31 BRENTANO’S—and to her right a street sign read 16TH. Was there a correlation between Tommy’s numbers and the addresses of vandalized buildings? Or was she just grasping at straws?
“Please wait,” Phil said, and got out.
“The meter’s running, just so you know.”
“Excellent. I won’t be long.”
And she wasn’t. She returned a minute later, empty-handed. They’d sold out of the book weeks before. Fortunately, her taxi was still there, and she climbed into the back. “The Plaza, please.”
No Sherlock Holmes for Preswick. He’d have to make do with the muffler, the handkerchiefs, and the bottle of Old Angus that she knew he enjoyed when he was off duty.
“The numbers aren’t bank accounts or dates or lock combinations. They’re addresses!” Phil announced when Preswick opened the door to her apartment. She strode down the hall, shedding outer garments, until she got to the study.
“They’re addresses!” she said to Preswick and Lily, who had crowded into the doorway. The map of Union Square with its series of little Xs was sitting on an easel, and Phil walked right up to it, hands on her hips.
“At least I think they are. Preswick, where are those news articles you clipped out?”
Preswick crossed to the bookshelf and sorted through the stack of folders. He handed her a folder, and she opened it on the study table.
“And I’ll need that list of numbers from the safe.”
Preswick bowed and left, returning a minute later with a single sheet of paper, which he placed on the desk next to the folder of articles.
“Now. Let’s see if I’m right.” Phil picked up the first newspaper article.
“Here it is. Three thirty-two East Eleventh. So a combination of three and three and two and eleven.” Phil ran her finger down Tommy’s list of numbers. “Nothing that fits Tommy’s list. And there are too many numbers in each of his entries. Maybe I was wrong.”
“Keep trying, madam.” Lily looked as expectant as a child at Christmas, which, Phil noted, they should be celebrating instead of investigating.
“Three thirty-two. Where would that be on East Eleventh? Preswick, do you know?”
“Well, addresses run from Fifth Avenue in each direction, my lady, so I would surmise it to be between Second and First Avenues.”
Phil frowned. “Too far away from the ones we’re interested in. Let’s mark it with an H for ‘Black Hand.’”
Lily snared a pencil from the pencil case and made an “H” where Preswick pointed on the map.
“Three forty-five East Twelfth.” Again she searched through the list of numbers.
“Also not on Tommy’s list,” she said. “And also too far east.”
“Yes, my lady. Nearer the Italian neighborhood, where the Black Hand generally operates.”
“And I was certain I had a new line of inquiry.”
“Try again with one of the places we saw.” Lily was standing on tiptoe to see over her shoulder.
“Okay, that place right across the street from the Cavalier Club. Preswick?”
“The avenues are more difficult, my lady.”
“Then we’ll just have to go down there and see for ourselves,” Phil said. “And on Christmas Eve.”
“If I might suggest…”
“Please do, Preswick. I seem to have gotten ahead of myself.”
“Lorenzo is on duty today. Perhaps he knows the address of the Cavalier Club. We might be able to figure out the others from there without making the trip.”
“Excellent idea. And Mrs. Toscana’s, if you don’t think that would be untoward. Actually, I think I wrote down her address somewhere. No, that won’t help. That occurred after Tommy’s death. It wouldn’t be on his list. Nor would his apartment building.”
“I’ll return shortly,” Preswick said, and took himself off.
While he was gone, Phil drew in Tommy’s apartment building and Mrs. Toscana’s, the store along Tommy’s block with the missing glass, and the vegetable stand across from the club.
“It certainly looks like, of late, the Hand is narrowing their destruction to these two blocks—if it is the Hand.
“What do the ones around Fourteenth Street have in common? A vegetable stand, a florist, a tenement building, an exclusive brothel, and a brownstone. And those are just the ones we know about.”
Phil glanced at the desk clock. It was coming on late afternoon. She still had packages to be sent up from the storeroom. She couldn’t wait until Preswick and Lily were asleep, as her mother and father had done when she and her sisters and brother were children. They would waken at the commotion.
“They’re all close together,” Lily said into Phil’s thoughts.
“What?”
“Not the ones in the newspaper. But the ones that we know about are all closer together than the ones in the paper.”
“They are indeed,” said Phil, drawing her thoughts back to the investigation. “For what purpose? And what, if anything, do they have to do with Tommy’s list of numbers?”
Phil crossed her arms and stood back to study the map. Tommy dead in the Theatre Unique, across the street from Tammany Hall. The Cavalier Club, where Tammany Hall politicians congregated, and Mrs. Toscana’s house, The Rose, where they went for more intimate entertainment.
Was Tammany Hall the key? They controlled much of the city’s operations. Didn’t Marty say that Jarvis was influential with the Tammany crowd? Tommy definitely took an interest in Roz. Was that the connection?
At that point, she hit a brick wall. Fortunately, Preswick returned with the address of the Cavalier Club.
“One eleven Third Avenue.”
“But it wasn’t blown up,” Lily pointed out.
“No, but we can deduce that the store across the street would be an even number somewhere around one hundred eleven.”
Phil perused Tommy’s list. “One-one-two-three. One twelve Third Avenue,” she said triumphantly and somewhat prematurely. “But there’s a dash and three more numbers after those.” She felt an indescribable stab of disappointment. She’d been certain.…
“Try another one,” Lily said. “There are more articles in the folder.”
Phil read the next address out loud. Preswick drew boxes in the approximate location. There were numbers that didn’t correspond with some of the boxes, and some boxes for which they didn’t have the address. But a pattern was emerging.
“Maybe we are on to something. Marty will know more about how Tommy made his notes. I’m surprised she hasn’t managed to stick in a visit between the events she’s covering.
“At least there’s enough here to warrant further investigation. I suppose we’ll have to find out the addresses of these other buildings and see if they correspond with the remaining numbers on Tommy’s list. And try to figure out what these additional numbers mean.”
“If your ladyship is amenable, Lily and I thought we’d go down to help serve food for the newsboys tomorrow afternoon. Each year, a Mr. Filess serves Christmas dinner to over two hundred boys.
“Mr. Tuttle and Mrs. Reynolds’s cook, Mrs. O’Mallon, will be serving. Mr. Sloane is one of the sponsors. It’s for the newsboys and, well, I want to make sure that Just a Friend has a good hot meal at Christmas.”
“By all means, a good cause. We’ll all go. Now, I think we have done enough work for a Christmas Eve. I wonder if Monsieur Lapparraque knows how to make a good English punch?”
“I’m sure he will do all he can to accommodate you, my lady.”
“And would you also call down to the concierge and ask him to send up the packages I left with him?”
“Yes, my lady.”
Phil stretched out on the parlor sofa. The tree rose almost to the ceiling. The mirrored balls sparkled in the glow of the electric lights and cast hues of color over the Moravian stars they’d made themselves. Popcorn and cranberry garlands had magically appeared, and Phil marveled that her two servants were so creative and still managed to run their residence—and investigate—with ease.
She’d made the right decision leaving England. And if she occasionally was hit with a longing of waking up on Christmas morning to find the fields outside her family’s country estate covered in mounds of soft white snow, there was Central Park just outside.
At the moment, it was wearing a two-week-old coating of smoke and soot. But just after a snowfall, it was as beautiful as any English countryside. And besides, there was Broadway, and Holly Farm, and Bloomingdale’s, and—murder investigations.
Yes, she was definitely where she wanted to be.
Lorenzo and the punch arrived along with five bellmen dressed in hotel uniforms and carrying more packages than Phil remembered buying. They marched through the front door, and Phil suddenly remembered the list of numbers she’d left on the study table. One couldn’t be too careful, even with the security of the Plaza.
She ran down the hall to make certain no one came that way.
Lorenzo set up the punch bowl while the bellmen arranged the packages around the tree, then they lined up to accept the tip Preswick had at the ready and filed out of the apartment with wishes of “Merry Christmas.”
Preswick turned from the door. “They seemed to have left some of the packages in the entryway.”
“They’re for you and me, Mr. Preswick,” Lily said, peering around the edges of a very large, strangely shaped package. “They say ‘Do not open until Christmas morning.’ Are they from you, madam?”
“No. I don’t recognize them. Those are from me.” Phil pointed into the parlor, where packages overflowed from beneath the tree to litter the table and floor nearby.
“All of those?”
“There are two for Mrs. Reynolds, but I admit I got carried away,” Phil said. “Well, never mind. Put them with the other packages.”
Lily reached for the package.
“Stop!” Phil yelled.
Lily froze. “What is it, madam?”
“Don’t touch either one. Just don’t touch them.”
“You suspect another bomb, my lady,” Preswick said more than asked.
“Possibly. I don’t recognize either of those packages.”
The three of them stood staring at the packages.
“There’s an envelope with them,” Lily said.
Preswick moved her aside, leaned over to study the packages and envelope. Very carefully, he slid the envelope off the packages and let it fall to the floor. Then he picked it up and looked at it. “It is addressed to you, my lady.” He handed it to Phil. “I believe it is safe to open.”
Phil turned the envelope over, dismissed the idea of retrieving her letter opener, and tore it open.
Countess. “‘Countess,’” she read aloud. “‘I had to borrow Green’s notes. No time to spare, and I knew you would argue. I’ll return them. Enjoy Christmas and Boxing Day. You’ll hear from me.’
“Heavens!” Phil rushed toward the safe, nearly oversetting her servants, who were quick to follow. She knelt down and quickly ran through the numbers of the combination, yanked the door open.
Tommy Green’s notes were gone.
The only things left were a few personal papers, her jewelry, the tell-all diary that she had as yet not had to use—and empty space.
Preswick and Lily bent over her to peer into the safe.
“He did it again!” Phil said, exasperated beyond belief. “He could have just asked. And he didn’t even take the list of addresses—if they are addresses—because I hadn’t returned them to the safe as yet. I believe they may be the key to it all or at least the proof of something—someone—besides the Black Hand at work.
“You might as well put his packages with the others.” Phil paced across the floor, then turned back to her surprised servants.
“This is why women—and butlers, of course—run households. We’d all starve to death and never have clean linen if it was left up to the man of the house.
“Now what do we do? Oh Lord, and Marty will show up any minute to continue investigating and we’ve lost the materials.”
Phil strode back to the study, followed by Preswick and Lily close on her heels. She picked up the list from the study table. Drummed her fingers on the tabletop.
“He must have come in with the bellmen carrying the packages. While they were depositing the gifts in the parlor, he was cracking our safe. The nerve of the man. I—we—do all the legwork, and he comes in and reaps the benefits.”
“He is rather remarkable,” Preswick said. “He managed to avail himself of a uniform, deposit his packages, break into the safe, steal the documents, and then stood in line to accept a tip for his trouble.”
“You gave him a tip—again?”
“I beg your pardon, my lady. In my defense, I didn’t know it was he.”
“Neither did I. I panicked, and instead of paying attention, I ran to protect the list. Which I might have been persuaded to loan to him, if he wasn’t so sneaky and conniving. It’s not the first time he’s left me—us—high and dry.
“But, so help me, this will be his last.”