Fallen Women Page 12

  “Oh no!” Varina said, thrusting her napkin against her breast in an almost prayerful manner. “How utterly dreadful. Beret, you must extricate yourself from this business at once. It is much too dangerous. I won’t have something happen to you, too.”

  The judge put his hand on his wife’s arm. “Let’s not be too hasty. Let the detective sergeant tell us what happened first. Michael.” He indicated a chair, and Mick sat down.

  The instant the detective was seated, William appeared with a cup and saucer and held them out inquiringly. Mick nodded, and William set down the cup and filled it, placing a napkin and spoon beside it. Mick reached for the sugar bowl, then realizing perhaps that the Stantons served decent coffee, stayed his hand.

  “Have you had breakfast?” the judge asked.

  “I’m fine.”

  Judge Stanton turned to his wife. “I don’t want to distress you, Varina. You have been through a great deal already, and you don’t have to listen to this. We understand if you wish to leave us.”

  Varina shook her head. “I prefer to stay, if for no other reason than so Beret does not have to hear it by herself.”

  Beret patted her aunt’s hand as if in thanks, although she did not know why having the woman nearby would make the details of a second murder any more palatable. The news stunned her. Could the two murders be connected? She could not imagine that whoever had hated Lillie enough to kill her had hated a second prostitute, as well. The poor girl, Beret thought, wondering if, like Lillie, the dead woman had a family to mourn her. It was more likely that she was alone and would be buried in a pauper’s grave.

  “Michael,” the judge said again.

  Mick had gulped his coffee, and now he set down the cup. William came forward to fill it, but Michael waved him away. “I don’t know much more than what I just told you, sir. A prostitute’s been murdered in much the same way your niece was. A patrolman was dispatched to my door not thirty minutes ago with the news. I’m to go there immediately, but I stopped here to see if Miss Osmundsen might want to accompany me.”

  “Certainly not!” Varina said.

  But Beret was pleased as well as surprised at the invitation. “I want to, Aunt. If Lillie’s killer is murdering other women, then I intend to do whatever I can to help apprehend him.” She added to forestall her aunt’s objection, “I owe it to Lillie.”

  “Nonsense, Beret. It might have been all right for you to playact detective the past two weeks when we thought Lillie’s death was an isolated incident. We understood how you might have felt a responsibility to apprehend her killer. But you would put yourself in danger if there is a madman at loose. Besides, I don’t know what help you could give the police anyway.”

  “Actually, she has been a help,” Mick said, and Beret looked at him in surprise, because she thought he’d only been humoring her. In fact, she had been sure he still wanted to be rid of her. Mick glanced at her and shrugged. “You did tell me some things I wouldn’t have found out on my own.”

  “Be that as it may, you must stop this snooping into criminal affairs. John, forbid her from continuing.” Varina set down her fragile cup so hard that a tiny chip broke off the bottom and fell into the saucer. William quickly removed them and set down a second cup and saucer, pouring fresh coffee.

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that,” the judge said. “Beret has her mind made up. I could no more stop her from doing what her mind is set upon than I could stop you, my dear.”

  “Your mother would be horrified,” Varina said, as if she were playing her last card.

  Beret gave a sad smile, pretending the comment caused her to reconsider, but in fact, in this matter, she was her mother’s daughter. Working in the mission had toughened Beret’s mother as it had Beret. Both had witnessed the underside of life and felt compelled to do something about it. The young woman knew that in her place, her mother would have made the same decision.

  “I’m ready to go,” Beret said, not wanting to prolong the confrontation with her aunt. She rose and set aside her napkin.

  “We’ll take the streetcar,” Mick said.

  “No,” Varina said. “If you must go, then I insist that Jonas drive you. Since you won’t take my advice about giving up this venture, Beret, as least save yourself the embarrassment of walking along Holladay Street like a common woman.” Beret glanced at Mick as if to say she had not told her relative that she had been tramping Holladay Street not many days earlier.

  Varina called the butler and told him to have the carriage readied, and in a few minutes Beret and Mick were riding off toward Holladay Street behind Jonas. If the driver had been startled when Mick gave him the address, he hadn’t shown it.

  “What more can you tell me?” Beret asked the detective. “Are you quite certain the same man killed both women?”

  “Not certain at all, but from what I know so far, that appears likely. The prostitute—her name is Sadie Hops—was alone in her crib, although, as you know, crib girls operate by themselves. There’s no madam and often not even a mac to keep track of them. Sadie had been on Holladay Street a long time, five years at least, and was addicted to morphine. She was as pitiful a case as I ever saw—foul, disease-ridden, covered with sores, as profane as a street urchin. The street ages them, the crib girls more than the parlor house women, although in the end, they all suffer. I’d be surprised if Sadie was much older than your sister.” Mick shook his head. “She would have had to accept any man with two bits to spend, so she had some pretty tough customers.”

  Beret knew all of that from her work at the mission. She was pleased that Mick seemed sympathetic, because many of the police officers she encountered in New York not only were immune to the troubles of crib girls but ill-treated them. Some even extracted a tribute—money or favors. “You know her, then?”

  “I walked a beat on Holladay Street before I was promoted to detective. I knew plenty of them. She was pretty much like the others.”

  “So she would not have been suspicious of a man who entered her crib?”

  “My guess is she was so doped up she wouldn’t have recognized her own mac, that is if she had one, and as I said, she probably didn’t. It’s doubtful she made enough to support herself, let alone a fancy man.”

  “She would have been an easy mark, then.”

  “Indeed. That might be why the killer picked her. He would have gone in as a customer, then stabbed her, and no one would have been the wiser. It was only by chance that her body was discovered this morning. Another girl had promised to loan her a hat and stopped at the crib. Otherwise, Sadie might have been there for two or three days before she was found.”

  “Until someone noticed the smell.” They were driving past the elegant mansions on Capitol Hill, a neighborhood that seemed as far removed from Holladay Street as if it had been on the opposite side of the world. Beret thought of the contrast between the fine homes and the crib where Sadie Hops had been murdered. The poor woman probably had had no idea how Denver’s elite lived. Her johns would not have been the millionaires and men-about-town who patronized the houses like Miss Hettie’s but instead men as abandoned and depraved as she was.

  But perhaps Sadie had started out with someone like Miss Hettie and had spiraled downward as the liquor and the drugs took hold. She would have gone to a smaller, less expensive house, then to one of the nicer cribs and finally to a hovel at the end of Denver’s row. Beret couldn’t help but wonder if Lillie would have followed the same course if she’d lived. Would her sister have ended her days in one of those foul dens, a used-up woman, a dope fiend, before she was thirty?

  Beret shook her head, as if to rid herself of those thoughts. This was not a time for recrimination. There was work to be done. She concentrated on the facts about the two dead women, comparing the circumstances of their murders. “Sadie Hops was stabbed multiple times, like Lillie. And her earrings were stolen. Both were prostitutes. Those are the similarities. Are there others you know about, Detective?”

  “Both w
ere young, although most of them are. They don’t last long, as you know. I would be interested to see if both had blond hair, whether they were alike in appearance. I remember Sadie was a blonde once, but I hadn’t seen her lately.”

  Beret nodded. “You think, then, that our man, if indeed one man is responsible, is singling out a certain kind of woman?”

  “He might be.”

  “What about the differences?”

  “Well, for one thing, your sister worked in a brothel. It would have been harder for the killer to get near her. If he was a thief, I can understand why he stole your sister’s earrings. But why Sadie’s? They were likely worthless.”

  “Perhaps he took them for a trophy.”

  Mick nodded. “Here’s another thing. If he’s targeting prostitutes, why would he have gone to the trouble of sneaking into Miss Hettie’s when he could have gotten to one of the girls on upper Holladay Street?”

  “Perhaps he did not think clearly about that the first time, but once he’d embarked on this course, he chose a crib girl for ease of access,” Beret said.

  “That could be. I think the differences are not so important as the similarities.”

  “I believe it’s clear he hates prostitutes.” She realized both of them had accepted the fact that one man was responsible for both murders.

  “Seems like it,” Mick said.

  “Will there be more killings, then?” She leaned forward so that she could look at the detective.

  Mick’s face twisted, and he would not look her in the eye. “I fear so. I fear your sister’s murder was just the first in this madman’s career, unless, that is, he’s killed elsewhere. Perhaps he’s new to Denver.”

  Like Teddy. Beret wondered if Mick had the same thought.

  The detective continued. “But then, we haven’t even seen the crib where Sadie was killed. It’s altogether possible the crimes were done by two different men. Maybe the second killer read about your sister’s murder in the paper and decided to copy it. Such things happen, you know.”

  “You don’t believe that.” That was not a question.

  “No. I believe a monster has been let loose on Holladay Street. And if we don’t catch him, he will kill again.”

  Chapter 10

  The Stanton carriage passed through the residential area and the downtown business district, bustling now with bankers and clerks, messenger boys and shopgirls, the street crowded with hacks and carriages. Beret didn’t like Denver any better that morning than she had two weeks earlier. The buildings were small by New York standards, and not very interesting, mostly two- and three-story edifices that appeared to have been thrown up in a hurry and cheaply constructed, as if the builders did not know how long the town would last.

  Here and there were churches and one or two cathedrals. Beret wondered if Denver was a religious city. Her aunt and uncle attended services. In fact, Beret had gone with them the past Sunday. And of course, a minister had officiated at Lillie’s funeral service. He had called on Beret just the day before to give his condolences. Beret had not wanted to see him for fear he’d talk about hellfire and repentance and dwell on Lillie’s sins. But the clergyman had not even mentioned the circumstances of Lillie’s last months and had said only that life was precious and it was hard to accept the death of someone so young. He hoped Beret would turn to God for solace. She had thanked him but thought solace would come more readily from finding Lillie’s killer.

  Now, Jonas turned onto Holladay Street. The morning was still new, it was not yet nine o’clock, and the street had the desolate appearance of a bacchanal that had ended. Bottles were strewn along the sidewalks. Trash cluttered the gutters, along with discarded newspapers. A man’s top hat had been blown onto an elm branch and rested there like some wild creature waiting to pounce. The houses were shuttered, and except for a delivery wagon here and there, the street was deserted, the life sucked out of it. Beret marveled at the difference between a tenderloin in the daytime and at night.

  She and Mick were quiet as the carriage made its way up the street, each of them looking out at the procession of whorehouses that grew shabbier the farther they went. Jonas slowed the horses, and Beret saw him looking at the cribs, as if searching for a number. Were they numbered? she wondered.

  “Up ahead,” Mick called, and Jonas brought the carriage to a stop. Two patrolmen stood beside the crib, talking to a handful of women, crib girls themselves or streetwalkers, Beret thought, judging from the carelessness of their appearance. Their hair was frightful, and there were traces of paint on their faces. They were dressed in thin wrappers and shabby coats, their feet in rubber shoes. One girl was barefoot. A whore with a cigarette in her mouth stuck out her lower lip, blowing smoke in front of her face. She observed the carriage languidly, perhaps wondering if the occupant was a john, out for a good time. When Mick alighted, she scowled.

  The two officers guarding the door straightened up when they saw Mick, then looked with curiosity as he helped Beret step down. She followed the detective as he greeted the patrolmen.

  “We ain’t touched nothing, sir,” one told Mick, although the man was looking at Beret, appraising her.

  “It’s a mess in there,” the second patrolman said. He was Officer Thrasher, the same young policeman Mick had encountered at Miss Hettie’s. “Just like last time, blood, things throwed all over, not a pretty sight. No, sir, not at all. I was the first on the scene, the first officer, that is. I took one look and told Rasmussen over there, you call for Mick McCauley. He’s going to want to see this.” The officer’s voice was loud, as if he were speaking to an audience, and it was clear that he took pleasure in his recitation and in his part in discovering the crime. Then he said to Beret, “You’re not going in there, are you, ma’am? It’s no sight for a lady.”

  “You let me see it, and I’m a lady, ain’t I?” one of the prostitutes protested, and the officer reddened. “She just looked in the door, sir. I didn’t let her go inside,” he told the detective.

  Mick narrowed his eyes at Beret, as if to ask if she still wanted to view the body. When she showed no inclination to back off, he asked, “Ready?”

  “I’ll follow you, Detective McCauley.” But first she went back to the carriage and dismissed Jonas.

  “Mrs. Stanton won’t like it if I leave you here, miss. She says to look after you. I’m obliged to do it,” the driver said.

  “We could be hours, and my aunt might have need of the carriage before I’m finished,” Beret told him. “Besides, as you can see, I am with several police officers. I could not be more safe if I were in the Stanton home. I do not want you to wait.”

  Jonas considered her, then reluctantly picked up the reins and started off. Beret watched him for a moment, then quickly dismissed him from her mind as she turned back to the crib. She did not notice that Jonas drove only a few doors down the block, then turned around and stopped.

  Mick had already gone inside with the two patrolmen, and Beret followed, steeling herself before entering the little building. The crib was a shack with a single door that opened directly onto the street, and a window next to it. Sadie would have stood in the doorway to solicit business, or if the prostitute was busy with a john, a customer could peer through the thin curtains on the window, curtains that were torn and gray with dirt.

  The crib was made up of two rooms—the front room, fitted with an iron bed and a washstand, an iron stove, and a back room where Sadie would have kept her belongings. From time to time, a prostitute had an accomplice who hid in the back room and stole the customer’s money while he was busy with the girl. Occasionally the cribs had closets where a prostitute could hang a man’s coat and pants. A door or loose panel in the second room allowed the accomplice, called a panel man, access to the closet. He could go through the clothing for money or other valuables while the john was occupied in front.

  Generally, the crib customers were so drunk, they weren’t aware that they’d been robbed until later, and when they realized what
had happened, they often couldn’t remember which crib they’d entered. Some hadn’t even planned to go inside, had only walked by out of curiosity, but then the prostitute had grabbed a hat, forcing the man to enter the crib to retrieve it.

  Beret had been in such hovels before, rescuing women who were sick or maimed by customers or pimps, but she was never prepared for the desolation, and she held her breath as she stepped into the room and looked about. The walls and ceiling were black with soot and dirt. Newspapers, water-stained now, had been placed over holes in the ceiling as well as the walls, where they were pasted upright, as if Sadie read the articles in her off hours—that is, if she could read. Above the bed was a picture of the Virgin Mary, her face tilted heavenward, her hands together in prayer. The picture was faded, and Beret thought it had been there a long time, probably hung by someone who occupied the crib before Sadie Hops. Risqué drawings of pretty girls, dressed in lingerie or nothing at all, their hands and eyes inviting, were pinned to the walls. They had been torn from the Police Gazette or one of the girlie magazines. Beret noticed that someone had blackened the eyes of the woman in one of the pictures.

  The rough board floor was filthy, with a path worn from the door to the bed to the rickety table that served as a washstand. A basin half filled with dirty water and a gray rag were on the table. Next to the basin was a pewter spoon in a glass and an empty whiskey bottle, along with dirty pots, broken crockery, and remnants of food. A battered pan holding a congealed mess rested on the tiny stove, which was cold now, the coal bucket beside it empty. A few pieces of ragged clothing hung on nails in the wall. A chamber pot was just under the bed. The place stank of sewer gas and mold and general filth. The only air came from the door, since no one had had the sense to open the window. Beret could not see into the back room but assumed it held a trunk containing any valuables the girl would have had, photographs, perhaps a few mementos of an earlier life, such as postcards or letters or sad little trinkets. Sadie Hops would have kept her stash of liquor in the back room, too, lest a john grab a bottle and help himself.