Instead of summoning Lily the next morning, Phil slipped into her robe de chambre and padded down the hall to the kitchen. It was only a week before Christmas, and she was feeling an uncharacteristic sense of excitement. There were plans to be made … and, alas, a murderer to be caught.
There was a new stack of newspapers on the table, and Preswick, in his shirtsleeves, was bent over ironing one of the sheets, a habit he refused to abandon even though at the rate they went through papers it seemed a waste of his time. Lily sat at the table sipping a cup of tea, forehead resting on her hand as she read one of the articles out loud.
“And listen to this.” She read, “‘The new ball is five feet in diameter, and the light for it will be supplied by one hundred electric lamps. And it will begin to descend exactly one minute before the new year begins.’” Lily looked up, her profile alight with excitement. “Imagine that. Do you think we could go see it?”
Preswick glanced up from his iron but bypassed Lily and saw his mistress. His mouth opened slightly with astonishment.
“Lily,” he said sharply, then quickly put down the iron and shrugged into his jacket and gave it a sharp tug. “My lady.”
Lily jumped out of her chair, ran her hand across her dress, and curtseyed at the same time, a habit she’d had no trouble abandoning when it suited her. But surprise had brought it all back.
“Madam—my lady. I didn’t hear you call.” She glanced toward the cupboard where the modern intercom system was housed.
“Most likely because I didn’t call. I thought I’d come down and see what you two do when you’re not waiting on me hand and foot.”
To Phil’s utter surprise, Lily’s eyes filled with tears.
“Don’t sack me, please, my lady.” She shot a frightened look toward Preswick, who seemed to have been struck dumb.
Phil pulled out a chair and sat down. “No one is getting sacked. I just thought I would see what it was like to come ‘downstairs,’ as they say, without getting dressed. Quite liberating. Is that coffee? May I have a cup? And you can tell me all about this New Year’s Eve ball descent I’m hearing so much about.” She looked from Lily to Preswick. “Or must I return to my room?”
Both her servants stood stock-still, as if they couldn’t believe what they were hearing.
“I’m sorry, I won’t do it again,” Phil said contritely. Evidently the age-old servant-mistress decorum was to be maintained in their new life. It was a venerated system, whose divisions were made so that everyone clearly knew their place. And, she supposed, which left guesswork and insecurity behind.
But it created quite a few needless barriers when you were running a household of one.
“Yes, my lady, and I’ll call for breakfast immediately.” Preswick poured her a cup of coffee, just as if the order of his world hadn’t just been tested, and left the room.
Phil drank her coffee while Lily finished reading the article about the New Year’s celebration, but in a much smaller, less excited voice. And Phil couldn’t help but feel a pinch of disappointment, that she might be an unwelcome intrusion into their enthusiasms.
“Well, I think that is definitely an event not to be missed. But now…” Phil reached for another paper and began to peruse it for more recent news.
“Still no word of Tommy Green’s demise,” she said, when Preswick returned a few minutes later, rolling a cart of covered dishes.
She folded the paper and moved it to the side, only to see another headline about the Black Hand.
“Though there is more of this Black Hand business. What do you know about them, Preswick?”
“Only what I read in the papers, my lady. They’re thugs who extort money from the Italian community, through threats and sometimes violence.”
“Well, these Black Hands just bombed a grocery store not far away from the Theatre Unique. It says they didn’t do much damage. In fact they seem peculiarly inept.”
“I believe the point is to frighten people into paying so they won’t do it again.”
“Despicable,” Phil said. “And is it really some widespread diabolical crime organization?”
“No one seems to know for certain, my lady.”
“So why would they kill a journalist who was investigating them? You would think they’d welcome the publicity. A chance to further people’s fear without them having to do anything at all.”
“I suppose one might look at it that way.”
“Well,” she said, pushing the paper completely aside to make room for a plate of eggs, baked tomatoes, and toast, which, like all their food, appeared miraculously, and piping hot, via a dumbwaiter from the basement, where the Plaza engaged an exceptional chef in Monsieur Lapparraque.
“I think today we must attempt to talk to this Harriet Wells.”
“Shall I telephone to the Times for you, my lady?”
“I think not, Preswick. I don’t want to show my face at the Times offices. They will recognize me from yesterday and wonder what I want. And if I mention Harriet by name, I might be putting her in danger.
“You and Lily will accompany me there this morning, both of you dressed as you were yesterday, which I must say was an excellent disguise. Lily, you will go up to the seventeenth floor—the elevator is rather daunting, but my faith is in you.
“You’ll go up to the news floor, and ask for her. If she is there, tell her you have some news to her advantage if she will accompany you downstairs or meet at an appointed time, but try to get her to go with you. She may not have returned to work. In which case you’ll have to find out a way to get her direction.”
Phil stopped for breath and a plan. “A relative. Say you’re her … not a sister. She has red hair and freckles, so ‘sister’ wouldn’t work.”
“Cousin,” Lily offered.
“Distant cousin,” Preswick added.
“You’re her distant cousin from out of town. And you were supposed to meet her at the paper. Insist that they give you her address. Take her a basket of homemade cakes or something that you promised to bring her. Don’t take no for an answer.
“Preswick, do you think the Plaza kitchen can accommodate us with some homemade treats?”
“Yes, my lady, I’ll call down. Monsieur Lapparraque would do anything for you.”
“Well, that is gratifying to know. Lily, are you up for the task?”
“Of course … my lady.” Lily dropped a well-rehearsed curtsey as an afterthought.
“Excellent. Then let us proceed to our toilettes and meet in the parlor in one half hour.”
Lily didn’t move but stood at the table biting her lip. “Shall I dress you first, my lady?”
“Oh yes, please. Something simple.”
Phil, wearing a walking dress of russet merino wool, was waiting in the parlor for Preswick and Lily when they appeared in their day-off clothes. She’d spent the time thinking of ways to engage Harriet Wells without frightening her or making her defensive. Though that was something you really couldn’t plan in advance. The interrogation of witnesses, she’d learned, hardly ever proceeded to plan.
Still, it was good to be prepared with several options.
They took a taxi to Times Square.
“I’m wondering if we wouldn’t do well to buy an automobile,” Phil said as they waited in traffic as it slowed around Columbus Circle.
“Whatever you think best, my lady,” said Preswick, waving away a boy selling whistles who had taken advantage of the traffic jam to stick his wares in the window.
“Yes, I know, but what do you really think?”
“Well, that it is easier to get around the city with public transportation, but it would be nice for the country.”
“And going to parties and the opera,” Lily added.
“True, but then we would have to keep a driver. At least hire one when we needed one. Unless you want to learn to drive, Preswick.”
“My lady.” His voice and expression were pure disinterested butler. Which of course spoke volumes. He didn’t know how to drive, wasn’t interested in learning, the suggestion of which in England would be paramount to an insult that would require his immediate resignation.
But in this irrational new world, he would do whatever she wished him to do, because he was the family butler and he was totally loyal. Phil hadn’t fully appreciated that relationship until she’d come to New York and he had insisted on accompanying her.
“Oh well, perhaps in the spring.” They turned down Broadway; Lily craned her neck to see the shop windows. She sucked in her breath as they passed one store where a hundred different dolls were crammed into the display window. And kept looking until she was practically turned around in her seat. At which point she realized what she was doing and quickly resumed her lady’s-maid demeanor.
Would Lily like a doll for Christmas? Surely she was too old for that. Phil tried to remember playing with dolls, but the memory escaped her.
And she was suddenly worried about Lily. What if she was struck dumb with fear during the elevator ride? What if they ran her out of the newsroom, or worse, suspected a scam and called the police?
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Phil asked her as soon as they’d stopped in front of the Times building.
“Yes, madam.”
Preswick and Phil stood at the door like anxious parents until she was inside. Then they crossed the street to wait.
It seemed an eternity before Phil caught sight of Lily’s felt bonnet passing out of the doors of the Times building. She still had the basket of hotel treats.
She stopped on the sidewalk and looked around. She looked so small and young and innocent that Phil felt a momentary stab of guilt for using her for such an errand. Then Phil remembered Lily kicking and biting her way to freedom against four customs men, standing up to the meanest cop in Manhattan, the Fireplug, Charles Becker. The reassuring feeling knowing that she kept a sharp stiletto strapped to her ankle and was more than willing to use it.
Preswick had started across the street, and Lily met him halfway. Then they both ran across the street to Phil.
The first thing she said was “I’m glad we don’t live that high up.”
“We appreciate your bravery, don’t we, Mr. Preswick?”
“Indeed we do, my lady.”
“Well, she wasn’t there. They wouldn’t tell me when she would be back. I told them that I had come all the way from Pennsylvania and she’d promised to show me the town. And what was I going to do, I didn’t have her address. Then this old beanpole told me they weren’t allowed to give out addresses because of people wanting revenge.” Lily paused at that. “Do you think that’s why that newspaper man was killed, because of revenge?”
“It’s possible, I suppose. Then what happened?”
“Then I begged and pleaded and resorted to tears, but he told me I should have better relatives, and walked away. Fortunately, one of the typewriter girls had overheard us, and she called me over. She said he was a heartless old miser and she lived right down the street from Harriet. I was afraid she was going to offer to take my cakes, but she didn’t. She wrote the address down on a piece of paper.”
Lily handed over a half sheet of paper. “‘East Twenty-Ninth Street,’” Phil read. “Let us go see if Harriet Wells is receiving.”
Harriet lived in a red-brick, ivy-covered boardinghouse a few doors down from the Martha Washington Hotel for women. The boardinghouse was modest-looking from the outside and guarded on the inside by a massive landlady, who asked a battalion of questions about their identities before agreeing to let Lily and Phil upstairs, though Mr. Preswick was invited to stay behind in the parlor.
“As I don’t let any gentlemen up to my girls’ rooms, no matter how gentlemanly they might appear.” She finished this explanation with a smile and chuckle that made her face wobble and sent Preswick into his most stoic demeanor.
“Room twelve, up two flights and to the right.” And Mrs. Mulvaney, as she introduced herself, trundled herself into the parlor to keep Mr. Preswick company.
Lily sputtered out a barely controlled laugh as soon as they were up one flight and had rounded the landing.
“We’ll owe him a wonderful tea when we’re finished,” Phil told her.
They found room twelve at the end of a hall covered by a shabby carpet runner. Phil knocked. At first there was no sound from inside.
“Drat the girl. I hope she hasn’t absconded.”
Phil knocked again. Listened. Heard nothing.
“Madam?” Lily said, and stepped in front of the door. She banged on the door. “Harriet, it’s me, your cousin from Pennsylvania. Open up. Ma sent goodies.”
At first Phil thought nothing was going to happen, then the door opened a crack. “I don’t have any cousin from—” That’s as far as she got before Lily thrust the basket of treats at her and forced her way through the door.
“Hey,” said Harriet.
“Hay is for horses,” Lily countered. “My mistress wants to talk to you, so no funny business.”
Phil looked to heaven. Too many dime novels. But it worked. Harriet looked out the door to the only person left, recognized Phil, and gasped, “You!”
“And you,” Phil said, and stepped through the doorway.
Harriet started shaking her head and backed away, just to stumble over Lily’s outstretched foot.
While Lily was attempting to keep Harriet from falling, while at the same time trying to save the cakes, Phil closed the door.
Harriet had recovered by then, or nearly recovered. Phil couldn’t tell if she was going to fight or flee. So they just stood facing each other for a few long seconds.
Away from the office, Harriet Wells looked even younger. Two braids, which had probably been coiled around her head, hung loose past her shoulders, and escaped tendrils wisped around her face. Her nose and eyes were red from crying, her freckles angry red spots across her cheeks.
Her mouth worked, and she began to cry again. “He’s dead. I know he is.”
“Yes, my dear, we both know he is.”
Lily was quick to provide a hankie from her valise dramatique, the bag of necessaries she always traveled with.
Harriet snuffled. “Did you kill him? I won’t say anything, I promise.”
Phil stared at the girl. She felt Lily move and just managed to stop her with a quick shake of her head. “Don’t be absurd. Of course I didn’t kill him.”
“Then why are you here? Just leave me alone. Nobody but us even knows he’s dead. I won’t say anything. I promise. Please.”
“I’m not going to hurt you. I just want some information. Why don’t we sit down and try to figure this out together.”
“Why doesn’t anyone say something?” Harriet whined from the other side of the handkerchief. “What are they waiting for? Where is he?”
Phil led her over to the sagging iron bed and motioned Lily to bring over the straight chair from the desk for herself. This was not the way any young girl should live. Clean enough, Phil supposed, a small desk and chair set beneath the one window that looked out onto another building, a table big enough for one, and a small boudoir chair that should have been put out in the trash years ago. And toilet down the hall that she probably shared with the rest of the floor.
The price one paid for freedom, Phil supposed. The price some paid for freedom, she amended. She had no intention of ever living in one room. The idea was barbaric.
“You were Tommy’s typewriter girl,” Phil began.
Harriet sniffed and looked over the balled-up handkerchief. “How do you know Tommy? What were you doing there?”
“I don’t know Tommy,” Phil said. “I was there taking in an afternoon picture show.”
The girl looked incredulous, and really, who could blame her? It was a total fabrication.
“I was hoping to catch some scenes from home,” Phil extemporized. “It’s at Christmastime I miss England most.” A total lie. She hadn’t thought about merry old England in months. “The holly and the ivy; kissing a beau under a ball of mistletoe.” Frankly she’d done more kissing—and what kisses they were—here and without the aid of mistletoe than she had her last year in England. “Sharing a bowl of wassail with friends.” Actually she hated the stuff; give her a martini or a pink gin fizz over punch any day. “So I stepped in to catch a glimpse of home.”
Lily was staring at her, horrified.
Harriet, dear thing, looked sympathetic. “I miss home, too … sometimes. But I came to the city to be a journalist. Not a fat chance. All they want me to do is type.”
“But it must be so interesting to read the news first, so to speak. You see it before anyone else except the reporter.”
“Do I? Oh, I guess I do.”
Oh dear, surely one needed an inquiring mind to be a good journalist. Harriet wasn’t proving to be thus equipped. Phil felt Lily growing impatient.
“Mr. Green must have really trusted you to let you see his unpublished notes.”
“I guess. Actually it was Sydney who trusted me.”
“Sydney?”
“He’s one of the news editors. He recognized my worth, he said, and assigned me to Tommy full-time.”
“Did he?” Sydney Lord certainly made his presence felt everywhere.
“He said Tommy was the best in the business, knew where to find news, and could get answers from a deaf-mute. And that I could learn a lot about reporting by watching and listening to Tommy work.
“And he was right. A couple of times when Tommy was covering the proceedings at the courthouse, he asked me to come along so I could take ‘street notes,’ he called them. Learning on the job, like, you know?”
Phil did know—all too well. She, herself, was learning on the job, but without the constant presence of a mentor. “So you were at the theater with Tommy?”
Harriet shook her head. “I don’t understand. Is that why you came to the Times? You came after me? Sydney said not to say anything.”
“Sydney knows that Tommy is dead?”
“No. I mean I didn’t tell him. I was afraid to tell him. When he assigned me to Tommy, he said to never tell anybody anything but him and Mr. Van Anda. That there were snitches everywhere and that’s what got Tommy’s last typewriter girl fired.”
This was news. “He had one before you?”
“Yes, Daphne. Someone must have leaked information, because Tommy was onto something big, but whoever he was investigating got tipped off and they got away with it. Daphne swore she wasn’t the one who blabbed, but they fired her anyway. I can’t get fired. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Do you still have Tommy’s notes?”
“No. He always took them back as soon as I was finished, the notes and the typed pages.” Her eyes narrowed, and she looked from Phil to Lily, who had drifted over to the window and was pretending to look out while sneaking a peak at the papers laid out on Harriet’s desk.
“Wait a minute. How did you find me? They’re not supposed to give out addresses. How did you even know Tommy was a reporter? Who sent you?”
Phil sighed, growing rapidly annoyed. Surely even a fledgling reporter would have learned to wait for an answer before asking another question. “My friend and I were meeting Marty Rive for lunch when you stepped off the elevator, and I recognized you. And you, I suspect, recognized me.”
“What were you doing there?”
“I just told you.” Really, if the girl didn’t get better interviewing techniques, she’d do best to stick to typing.
“I mean, in the theater.”
“I told you that, too. But you still haven’t told me why you were there. If you didn’t accompany him, how did you manage to be there?”
“I don’t have to tell you anything.”
“No, you don’t, but you and I seem to be the only ones who know he’s dead. And when the police get involved, we don’t want to find ourselves accused of murdering him, do we?”
Harriet’s eyes grew so round, Phil feared they might burst.
“I don’t understand.” Harriet’s mouth began to twist again. Phil motioned to Lily for another handkerchief. Lily rolled her eyes and thrust another linen square at Harriet.
“So you were his typewriter girl, and then…,” Phil coaxed.
“Then a few weeks ago, he stopped giving me his notes to type. And Sydney said I must have screwed up. But I didn’t. Tommy just—clammed up.”
“Maybe he was trying to protect you?”
Harriet looked up at that.
“Do you know what he was investigating?” Phil asked.
“The Black Hand violence in the city.”
“Do you think the Black Hand killed him?”
Harriet’s eyes rounded. “I don’t know.”
“Did he mention any particular names in his reporting?”
Harriet shook her head. “I don’t think so. I can’t remember. And Sydney said—”
“Not to talk,” Phil finished. “But you’ll have to talk to the police and they won’t be as nice as I am.”
Harriet gasped. “Becker! They’ll send Becker. He was there at the theater. I want to go home.”
Phil didn’t bother to point out she was home, unless she was considering returning to her parents.
“Let’s start at the beginning. How did you end up at the theater?”
Harriet looked down at her hands, whose fingers were trying to tie themselves in knots. “I thought Sydney was going to fire me, but he said he’d give me another chance. That I should apologize for whatever I’d done and to show Tommy that I was serious about journalism.
“So I went to apologize, to explain I wasn’t the leak, but Tommy was on the telephone. I stepped back behind the filing cabinet, to be polite you know, until he finished.
“I heard him agreeing to meet someone at the Theatre Unique. He was talking low in a real serious voice, so I just stayed still and waited for him to hang up. And I decided to follow him.”
Phil was dying to ask her why, but she didn’t want to interrupt the girl’s narrative.
“So when he left, I said I was going to lunch and I left, too. I thought if I proved that I could follow a lead, he’d see I was serious about reporting and take me back.
“I waited until he got on the train, then I took the next train after his. I’d just arrived when I saw you sitting next to him. I thought he was there to meet you. I crept closer to see what you were up to. Then you touched his shoulder and he fell back and I saw his throat was slit. I think I screamed.”
“You did.”
“And I ran.” She broke down completely. “I didn’t know it would be like this,” she sobbed through the second hankie.
She was shaking now, possibly from sobbing, possibly from fear, or possibly from putting on a good act.
“And you didn’t stop to tell anyone?” Phil asked. “Alert the manager? Sound the alarm in any way?”
“No. Why are you asking me all these questions?”
“I’m just concerned for you. It was just happenstance that we ran into each other at the elevator. Nonetheless, I felt it was my duty to help.”
“Why?”
“It isn’t every day one sits down next to a dead man. Like Tommy, I was concerned for your safety.”
“My safety?”
Phil somehow managed to hold onto her patience. “If I saw you, chances are someone else might have seen you.” Phil felt a smidgeon of guilt frightening the girl this way, but really, someone should. She was ripe for the picking.
“The killer? You think he may come after me?”
“Possibly. Do you know who he is?”
Harriet shook her head so vehemently that her braids swung out like a whirligig.
“You saw nothing?”
“No. I ran across the street and hid just inside the door to the Academy of Music. But I couldn’t just leave him there, but then I saw Becker arrive. He shouldn’t be down here. His beat is the Tenderloin.”
Phil nodded. She’d thought the same thing.
“Why doesn’t anyone know? I thought that policeman who came yesterday was there to tell Mr. Van Anda that Tommy was dead. But he didn’t. Or else Mr. Van Anda decided to keep it a secret. It doesn’t make sense. Why would he do that?”
Phil had no idea, but she knew someone who might.
But did she dare call on the one honest policeman she’d met in her brief time in Manhattan? Would Atkins tell her why he’d been at the Times building? He, like Becker, had been out of his normal jurisdiction. Perhaps as a personal favor to the editor?
“Did you see anything, anyone who looked suspicious?”
“Just Sergeant Becker, and I knew I’d be in big trouble if he saw me. We all steer clear of him. He’s horrible: he extorts money from everybody, does Tammany’s dirty work. I hate him. I didn’t know it would be like this.”
Phil glanced at Lily, whose eyes had rolled so far back in her head that it would have been comical if Harriet hadn’t been in such distress. Phil was loathe to admit it, but the best thing Harriet Wells could do was go back home. But Phil wasn’t one to break another’s spirit.
Phil patted her hand. “Perhaps you should consider taking some time off to visit your family.”
“I can’t. I won’t.”
“That’s your decision to make, but if you need our assistance, you can find me at the Plaza Hotel.” Phil stood.
Harriet fell across the bed sobbing.
Lily was already heading toward the door.
Phil followed but turned back. “Do you know where Tommy lives?”
Harriet sat up. “No. Why should I?”
“I just thought you might have had reason to go there, to drop off notes, to pick them up.”
“I didn’t. That would be fraternizing. The paper doesn’t allow it.”
Lily opened her mouth and Phil nudged her toward the door.
“We’ll be going now. Good day.”
“Stupid girl,” Lily said as they climbed down the stairs to the first floor. “She acts like a child, a stupid child.”
“Thank you for your opinion. She was rather silly, but I think she’s also quite frightened. We should try to have a little understanding.”
“Bah,” Lily said, and put an end to the subject.
Preswick was sitting bolt upright in a straight-backed chair while Mrs. Mulvaney chattered away. He shot to his feet as Phil and Lily walked into the small parlor.
“Ah, thank you, Mrs. Mulvaney, for entertaining our friend while we were upstairs. Now, we really must be going.”
Preswick nodded stiffly and bolted for the door.
“A singular waste of time,” Phil said as the three of them walked toward the corner in search of the nearest taxi stand. “The poor girl doesn’t seem capable of putting an intelligible sentence together.”
But she had managed to learn how to lie.