Darkness had descended completely by the time Phil, Lily, and Preswick climbed up from the depths of the subway station and onto the sidewalk at Fourteenth Street. Phil’s legs and teeth were still vibrating from riding the rails. It was truly amazing. They’d made the trip in fifteen minutes.
“Exhilarating,” Phil exclaimed.
Lily didn’t comment; Phil had noticed she’d gripped the strings of her purse so tightly the entire ride that her knuckles had turned white.
“Yes, my lady,” Preswick said. “And much faster than the trolley or omnibus or taxicab when the traffic is heavy.”
Phil nodded. “True.” Though she didn’t think she would make a habit of riding it as a way of transportation.
Phil led the way straight down Fourteenth Street to the Theatre Unique. She bypassed the ticket kiosk and told the ticket taker she wished to speak to the manager.
The ticket taker straightened slightly and just looked at her.
“Could you direct us to the manager’s office, young man?” Preswick said at his most officious.
The man jerked his head to the right. “Down there.”
Preswick led the way down a side hall to the manager’s office and rapped on the door.
“Just a minute” was barked from inside, followed by sounds of hurried activity.
“Perhaps if you and Lily would wait at the entrance, I could ascertain—”
The door opened.
“Yeah?”
“Am I speaking with the manager?” Preswick asked.
“Who wants to know?”
Phil eased in front of Preswick and gave the man a good look. He was a large man, in height and girth, with a high, receding hairline and ears that stuck out to the sides.
“I do.”
“Now listen, lady, if somebody picked your pocket while you were watching the show, we ain’t responsible. The sign says so. Can’t police people in the dark, now, can you?”
This was not the man who had ushered her out of the theater the day before.
“Were you here yesterday?”
“Sure. I’m here every day ’cept Sunday. And pretty soon I’ll be here then, too, if they ever make up their minds about whether to let us open or not. We can, we can’t, we do, and one of them groups complains. Bunch of baloney. If you don’t want to come on Sunday nobody’s makin’ you.”
“So you were here when the body was discovered.”
The manager’s eyes grew wary beneath beetled eyebrows. “Here now. What do you know about that? Some poor joker had a heart attack while watching the pictures. There are worse ways to go.”
“Where did they take him?”
“Police took him. You a relative or something? We are not responsible for the man’s bad ticker. You can’t get nothing out of us, so don’t even start.”
“I was here yesterday,” Phil told him, against her better judgment. She sniffed. “It was so upsetting. The man who introduced himself as the manager helped me out of the theater. I just wanted to thank him.”
“Well, if you want to thank somebody…” He puffed out his barrel chest.
“But I’m quite certain he was a much smaller man.”
The manager screwed up his face. “There ain’t no other manager. Only got the boy that takes the tickets and the fella in the ticket kiosk, but he don’t ever leave it till his replacement comes on. You musta misheard.”
“That must be it. Did the police say where they were taking the poor man?”
“Nope. And the less you and I know about it, the better.”
“Well, thank you for your time.” She turned to leave just as he stuck out his hand. Preswick dropped a coin into it and hurried them away.
They walked quickly back to the street and didn’t stop until they reached the square. Only then did Phil turn around, but if she expected to see the manager watching them from the doorway she was disappointed.
“Well, that answers one question,” she said. “The man who hustled me out the back door was not the manager.”
“No, my lady,” Preswick said, attempting to keep their little trio moving.
“Well, we’ve done what we can do for today. And I see no reason to let this situation ruin our holidays. Shall we take in the novelties of the park on our way home?”
The air was filled with revelry, but not of the same kind as yesterday, which was beginning to seem like a bad dream. Vendors still lined the way, selling a variety of wares and Christmas greenery in the light of the lampposts. But the nurses with their perambulators were gone, the ladies and their shopping were now at home. The few women peopling the sidewalk were of a lower class than their earlier counterparts.
They passed a row of boys hawking the late editions, a knot of men laughing uproariously and emitting a distinct aroma of cheap whiskey.
Perhaps this hadn’t been the best idea.
“Lily,” Preswick ordered. And Phil realized they’d left Lily, who had stopped and was enthralled by a game of thimblerig being carried on under the light of one of the many lampposts that lit the way.
“He palmed the pea,” Lily said as Preswick scuttled her away.
The girl was a constant surprise.
Farther along two young girls rattled tin cups and looked pitiful. Lily reached into her purse, but Preswick kept her moving. “Their handler is standing under that lamppost over there. They will see none of their alms. Use your money in a better way.”
“How, Mr. Preswick?” Lily asked, returning her coin to her purse.
Phil glanced over to the other side of the walk and took in the girls’ “handler,” a lanky man wearing baggy pants and jacket and a porkpie cap pulled low over his face. She was tempted to walk right over to him … and do what? His kind were legion among the poor. As she’d lately begun to realize.
She was getting quite an education in America.
Ahead, the sharp scent of evergreens beckoned to them, and they stopped at a pile of pine boughs tied in bunches and overseen by a bent old woman, whose layers of skirts and capes of various lengths made her appear almost round. An old-fashioned poke bonnet covered her face except for the tip of a large nose.
All of Phil’s senses came to the alert. She leaned in as if perusing the boughs but was really trying to get any whiff of exotic tobacco, because this was just the kind of disguise Mr. X would enjoy.
An unexpected anger seized her. If this was his idea of fun after how worried she’d been … but she could smell nothing beyond the pine boughs.
The old woman looked up. Her eyes were clouded over with cataracts. “A penny, lady. A penny for a nice thick bunch.” She held out a hand, the fingers gnarled with arthritis.
Phil motioned to Preswick to buy something and turned away, her emotions in turmoil—and bumped into another seller of holiday cheer.
“Mistletoe!” he warbled in a high voice, stumbling back slightly on the impact. He was underdressed for the weather with a misshapen suit jacket and a long muffler that wrapped around his neck in a way that reminded Phil of Scrooge’s clerk in the story by Mr. Dickens.
“I do beg your pardon,” Phil said.
But the man had wandered off, singing, “Mistletoe. Mistletoe for your sweetheart.” She’d meant to buy something from him, too, but when she turned to tell Preswick to go after him, the mistletoe salesman was already weaving his way toward the street.
Another man seemed to be following him, a customer, perhaps. As Phil started to turn away, the customer reached out. But instead of giving the customer a sprig of mistletoe in return, the mistletoe seller doubled over, fell to one knee as if the customer was forcing him to the ground merely by holding his hand.
The mistletoe seller nodded spasmodically. The man let go and the mistletoe man hobbled across the street. When Phil looked back, the other man was gone.
For a full minute she could only stare at her surroundings, unable to feel relief, anger, or anything but confusion. What did it all mean? Why come in contact with her if he didn’t have further instructions?
Though maybe he had.
While Preswick and Lily gathered their bundles of pine, Phil quickly unclasped her purse and peeked inside. No note. She checked the outer pockets of her overcoat: nothing in the first. But in the second, her fingers touched paper.
At last. Looking around to make sure she wasn’t being watched, she slid the paper out of her pocket. It was one sheet folded over in haste. And rather dirty.
It didn’t matter. She opened it there in the light of the lamppost, and her breath caught.
“Anything else, my lady?” Preswick held a large display of boughs rolled up in newspaper.
Phil swallowed, opened her mouth, but no words came out. She turned the open paper for him to see. Printed in crude block letters: STAY OUT OF THIS OR YULL BE SORRY. It was signed with the picture of a black hand.
“Wher-r-re did this come from?” Lily blurted out.
Preswick quickly scanned the surrounding area.
“I believe from the mistletoe vendor who I bumped into—or perhaps it was he who bumped into me.”
“I will find him and slit his thr-r-r-o—”
“I imagine he will be long away from here by now. I suggest we get into a taxi and go home, where we can analyze the situation.” Phil folded the note and slipped it into her purse. Why would the Black Hand be after her? Had they killed Tommy Green? What could he possibly have discovered that would warrant such a fate?
And if the mistletoe man wasn’t Mr. X, who was he, and who was the other man?
Her brain felt like a sieve. This wasn’t following the pattern of her previous cases. In those, she was thrust into a family situation and from there was able to solve a murder as well as ascertain additional facts for the people who made subsequent arrests.
Between Mr. X and his—dare she say “their”—people, and Detective Sergeant Atkins—in spite of his—they had managed very well.
But tonight as the taxi rattled its way up Fifth Avenue, she felt more confused than she had since she’d watched her parents’ carriage drive away from Dunbridge Castle, leaving her alone with her new husband, a cold, misogynistic man who had fancied her dowry and person in that order.
But she was no longer alone. She had Bev and the assortment of acquaintances and friends she’d made in the last few months. And most importantly, she had Lily and Preswick. Between the three of them, confusion would be put to rest.
Life was good, and Phil had no intention of letting something as ridiculous sounding as the Black Hand take it away from her.
Besides, hadn’t Marty said they preyed on the communities of small-shop owners and immigrants in order to extort money from them? They wouldn’t dare come after a countess—dowager or no—at the Plaza Hotel. Would they?
Later that evening, robed in one of her new Parisian kimonos, patterned in red, cream, and black for the holidays, Phil was lounging on the chaise in the parlor, having canceled her evening engagements in favor of a martini and an evening of scouring the newspapers for information about the Black Hand.
Preswick had collected all the available evening editions. They were lying in a pile at her feet.
She picked up the last remaining paper, snapped it open, and read:
Fourteen of Gang Caught in Pittsburgh.
Black Hand agents seeking to carry out repeated threats against Salvatore Scarito and his family, jeopardized the lives of sixteen other families early yesterday morning when they set fire to …
She wasn’t as yet really concerned about being targeted by the Black Hand. But after reading several articles, she was beginning to worry about the safety of her servants.
Would the thugs attack them to get to her? She couldn’t very well send them away until it all blew over, whatever it was. She had no country seat or hunting lodge. Just the Plaza. The whole idea was ludicrous.
She let the paper slide to her lap.
Why had they sent her to meet with Tommy Green? How was she supposed to investigate an unknown crime organization without an ounce of instruction to go on?
Why was the elusive Mr. X being more elusive than usual?
Did he even know what had happened? Had a simple exchange of information gone terribly awry?
Really, she could be so much more efficient if she was ever given a hint as to what her job was supposed to be.
She tossed the newspaper to the floor just as Preswick and Lily entered, carrying large vases trimmed with red ribbons and containing sprays of pine boughs that they deposited on each side of the fireplace.
“Oh, excellent,” Phil said, sitting up and giving them her full attention. “Shall we go out tomorrow and get one of those trees they’re selling on the corner? Is it too soon? I always thought it was silly to wait until Christmas Eve. And we’ll buy some of those electric lights I saw in the store window yesterday.”
Instead of causing a spark of excitement, at least from Lily, she was met with solemn faces.
“Now, look, you two, there is nothing to worry about. I’ve been reading the papers, and these people are not going to harm a countess living at the Plaza. They prey on the little man, those who don’t have the means to fight back, those who are new to the country and don’t speak the language.”
She didn’t seem to be making much of an impression.
“And besides, from what I’ve read, most of them seem singularly inept.”
“Inept enough to kill a man in a crowded theater,” Preswick reminded her.
“It wasn’t that crowded. And besides it was dark, and thirdly, I’m not sure it was the Black Hand.”
“But the note,” Lily reminded them.
“Yes, the note,” Phil said. “Considering the timing of the mistletoe man, I think the manager may have hired him to scare us away. He was probably threatened by Sergeant Becker not to talk.
“We dawdled in the square long enough for him to scribble a threat and draw a hand, because everyone knows that’s how the Black Hand signs notes. He runs out or sends that man in the ticket kiosk to pay someone to do exactly what the mistletoe man did. Bump into me and slip the note in my pocket.”
“But why would he do that, madam?”
Phil was trying to stay one step ahead of her servants. She didn’t want to alarm them and she didn’t want to spoil the holidays with needless fear. “Well … he wouldn’t want anyone to know that the Hand or anyone else had murdered a man in his theater. People would be afraid to come. He’d lose business. He might have to close down. So far no one has talked. I imagine he just wanted to make sure I wouldn’t, either.”
Lily let out a slow breath.
Preswick’s brow lightened minutely. “Nonetheless, my lady. We should all be at our highest alert whenever we leave the building.”
“You’re absolutely right, Preswick. And now I’ve suddenly acquired an appetite, I’ll dine in tonight.”
“Yes, my lady.”
As soon as Preswick and Lily had left the room, Phil slipped off the chaise and carried her drink over to the windows that overlooked Central Park.
Below her, Just a Friend had left for the day, making his cold slow journey back to the Tenderloin, where he lived with a group of boys under the protection of a shadowy character named Clancy.
A line of horse-drawn carriages waited along the opposite sidewalk to carry patrons on a romantic ride through the park. Automobiles and carriages ran up and down the street, transporting people to plays or parties or Christmas celebrations. Men strode hurriedly down the sidewalk, coattails flying, hands holding their hats to their heads. A family dragged a Christmas tree along the pavement, taking it home.
It was Christmas in Manhattan. And she wasn’t going to let the murder of a reporter, no matter how good he was, ruin her first Christmas in the New World.
It was obvious that she could not wait for instructions any longer. She would just have to find this killer herself.