CHAPTER TEN
R uth said, “Leona.”
Though she felt as if she might topple over, Leona remained standing with a sharp, hollow feeling of betrayal in the pit of her stomach.
Geneva had left them, her blue eyes tearful but hard and unrelenting.
She’d hidden the memoir in a safe place, she assured Leona.
But she’d given Leona no choice. Help Geneva find out how deeply Benedict had involved himself with his grandmother’s death and the nurse, Audrey, in return for her memoir.
“Please tell Detective Day?”
“What good will that do? I can only do what she wants me to do if I want to get my memoir back. Or else. You heard. She’ll ruin everything.”
You’re either a monster or a monstrous liar.
“Wicked woman,” Ruth said.
“Desperate woman,” Leona amended, though her heart thumped dark and unforgiving.
“Finding the truth means finding Audrey, but why would she tell me anything? Does Van Wyn know where Audrey is? Or is she hiding from him?” Leona rubbed at her temple, a headache clawing there.
“Geneva fears they are involved in a bigger scheme.”
“Perhaps she’s afraid he will disappear as well? With Audrey, or some other woman, and the money?”
“Yes, yes,” Leona agreed. “But where is Winifred Haussman?”
“Who is that?” Ruth asked.
“Daphne’s maid. There’s something going on there, too. I can feel it.” The pressure to find the woman twined like a rose vine with too many thorns, pressing harder and harder against her rib cage. “But I don’t know where her mother lives.”
“Mrs. Van Wyn seemed concerned when you mentioned Miss Haussman was missing. Might she know?”
Hope surged, and the thorns scraping at her insides eased off. “By golly, Ruth, yes! I didn’t see it clearly.”
“Because she has you in a terrible position.”
“Daphne always spoke well of her. Winifred will know everything.”
Perhaps an overstatement, but the idea put her a little closer to the return of her memoir and to finding out what really happened to Daphne. She wrote a note requesting the address and sent it out with the morning mail.
***
L EONA SPENT THE EVENING and deep into the night rereading Mr. Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories featuring the brilliant and peculiar C.
Auguste Dupin. She’d tried to sleep first, lying down with her husband, but left their bed when his snores began for her little study down the hall.
After starting a fire in the fireplace, she’d readied her pen and inkwell to take notes as she read.
How did one go about discovering who had committed a crime and proving it?
If she were Detective Day, what would she be doing right now?
She glanced at the night-filled window. Besides sleeping, she amended, like all other natural creatures of light.
Poe was a mood she gladly indulged in, letting him take her by the hand to lead her into the labyrinth of his tormented soul.
This time, though, she skipped the gory descriptions and concentrated on Dupin’s methods.
She made a list: Analysis, not cunning or perseverance.
No guessing. There were no coincidences.
Don’t gaze straight at the problem, look at the larger picture.
Follow the facts, like links in a chain.
The problem was, she had too few links to follow.
Benedict Van Wyn, Audrey Larkin, and Winifred Haussman.
A labyrinth lay before her; like Theseus, she would follow the unwinding ball of string.
The first step—what happened to Daphne the night she died?
If the coroner knew, so did Detective Day, and the report would soon be made public, she was sure.
In the Poe story, the Paris newspaper reported on what the witnesses heard and saw the night of the murders on the Rue Morgue.
Somehow Dupin had drawn the correct conclusion from their testimony without leaving his parlor.
Benedict got rid of the staff so they wouldn’t speak to the newspapers ? Maybe he paid them off, she wrote. Dupin said, “Ratiocinate. What do you think happened the night Mrs. Van Wyn died?”
There are no coincidences. I think she woke up.
***
G ENEVA SENT A BOY AROUND in the morning with the address.
Leona had to speak to Winifred’s mother alone, as Ruth had to report to the hospital where she worked for the next three days.
Leona dressed in a smart traveling ensemble and made sure she had both a notebook and pen, the address, and the derringer in her pocket.
Her pulse beat quickly in her throat in anticipation, and she dared to allow hope to flutter in her heart.
After bidding Mrs. McCarthy good-bye, she waved down a hackney and gave the driver the address in the Vinegar Hill neighborhood where Winifred’s mother lived.
He widened his dark gray eyes at her with a frown on his round, pockmarked face. “Are you sure, m’um? So close to Irishtown with all the soldiers and hooligans hanging about there? And you all alone?”
Unfortunately, she had to admit he might be correct.
The unloaded derringer was no match for the violent ruffians running illegal distilleries in the Fifth Ward and the type of crime and violence growing up from the roots of the shanty town.
Just earlier this month, two-thousand soldiers arrived by tugboat and descended on the neighborhood to destroy barrels of whiskey and distilleries down by the Navy Yard.
Winifred’s mother didn’t live in Irishtown, but to reach her address they would have to skirt a piece of ground where violent gangs reportedly traveled.
She showed him the derringer but didn’t speak of its lack of bullets. “I’ll double the fare, if you are willing.”
“You’ll only ask another cabbie to take you, I suppose,” he complained as he came down off the box. He handed her into the hackney. “I hope you’re a good shot.”
“I am,” she said as he shut the door.
They arrived without incident at the address scrawled on Geneva’s expensive stationary.
A small, leaning leftward, two-story house painted white, scoured by the wind from the river.
The cabbie told her he’d wait for her with a fatherly air she almost smiled at.
She put her thoughts on Winifred and knocked on the front door.
An older woman answered in a much-patched apron and tattered shawl, staring at her with faded brown eyes and a puzzled expression.
Leona felt self-conscious of her warm traveling ensemble with its good cloth, ebony buttons, and her hat with the jaunty feather.
She held out her hand. “Mrs. Hausmann, my name is Leona Gladney. I’m a friend of Winifred’s late employer, Mrs. Van Wyn. I heard Winifred is missing, and I wondered if you would speak with me about it?”
“Why?” the woman asked dully. “Everyone knows she’s gone but everyone thinks I know where she is.” Her eyes lifted to take in the street, up and down. “They’re watchin’, missus.”
“Who’s—”
The woman grasped her wrist, pulled her into the house, and shut the door. “I know who you are. Winifred talked about you.” She let go of Leona’s wrist. “Something terrible happened the night that poor lady died.”
In the dim interior of the house, her heart began to pound harder. “That’s what I want to know, Mrs. Hausmann. There are some who think your daughter stole the jewelry, and this is why she can’t be found.”
“I told my mother to trust you, Mrs. Gladney,” called a familiar voice.
Leona gasped, hardly daring to believe.
Mrs. Hausmann led the way to the kitchen, where Winifred sat with a cup of tea in front of her, dark curtains pulled over the windows. “Well, she never left, Mrs. Gladney. I only hid her here and reported her missing so them that’s looking for her would look elsewhere.”
Leona covered her smarting eyes, relief overwhelming her for a moment. “I hoped you were only hiding. But I feared you were dead.” She gazed at the red-haired young woman, who appeared haggard and drawn, just like her mother.
“Tea, Mrs. Gladney?” Mrs. Hausmann poured at Leona’s nod.
She sat in front of a steaming cup at the small kitchen table. “You didn’t go to the police with the truth, though. Why not?”
The two women exchanged glances.
“My father is in jail, for something he didn’t do,” Winifred said, tears choking her voice. “I feared the same thing would happen to me—they’d blame me for everything that happened the night Mrs. Van Wyn d-died. If she could have her way....” She tried to speak, but her sobs stopped her.
Her mother took her hand, and Leona the other until the young woman calmed.
“Will you tell me what happened?” Leona asked gently, close to tears herself. She knew what Winifred was about to say would be difficult to hear. After a few false starts, Winifred began.
“Mrs. Van Wyn was in a good mood that day. Together we sorted through some of her clothing for mending or giving away, talked about Christmas and the New Year. Mrs. Van Wyn was so easy to be with, you’d think you were chatting with someone your own age and had known forever.”
“Daphne liked having young people around,” Leona murmured.
“She spent some time in her study writing letters, at least until dinner. Mr. Van Wyn was supposed to pay a call on her after dinner—she hinted she had a piece of her mind to give him.”
When Winifred stopped to take a breath, Leona said, “Where was Audrey Larkin during this time?”
“I didn’t see her that night. Mrs. Van Wyn asked me to stay.
Mr. Van Wyn came, a bit later than he said he’d be, and they locked themselves in the library.
They had a terrible row, Mrs. Gladney. Poor Mrs. Van Wyn was so pale and shaking afterwards.
I really worried about her heart giving out because she was so heartbroken.
He—Mr. Van Wyn, I mean—she told me it was a shame he wasn’t like his father or his uncle, who were good men like her late husband. ”
“Do you know what they argued about?”