The Formula for Murder (16 page)

Her lips take a firm set and I realize once again I am up against a wall of resistance and that I have worn out my welcome in asking questions about the charming Dr. Lacroix.

“I’ll show you out.”

She gives me a stiff “good-bye” that sounds more like “good riddance” and slams the front door behind me.

Back in the hansom cab I have waiting, I find it strange and fascinating the lengths women will go to look younger; the money they are willing to spend, the lies they are willing to tell, the pain they are willing to endure, all in the name of looking more beautiful, as if beauty is a monopoly of youth.

It is a sad state of affairs for women because other than those with inherited wealth, there is little for most women to offer the world outside the home except beauty and sex appeal, because the doors to achievements have always been closed—which brings up a question about myself.

When I mark up as many years as women who drink evil-tasting water and bathe in mud, will I join them in the pursuit for a more youthful appearance.

I don’t know. I’m sure no one wants to grow old, but some obviously do it more gracefully than others. I just hope I will do it with grace. In the meantime, I won’t throw the first stone at Lady Chilcott and her friends.

Too anxious to wait until evening, I have the cab take me down streets where I will most likely find Emma’s mother. Explaining that I’m looking for a prostitute gets me a look from the driver.

“I’m with the Women’s Temperance League,” I tell him.

I have no luck locating Sarah and return to the hotel empty-handed, hungry, and tired.

27

A light mist is falling on this dark, moonless night as I leave the hotel for a rendezvous on a bridge with a prostitute.

While boarding a trolley I remind myself to keep alert—I had been attacked in broad daylight in London and now I am venturing out in the dark. Sometimes I wonder if Oscar isn’t right and I invite trouble because of the situations I put myself in. Perhaps I create the “wrong place” at the wrong time myself. My only justification is someone has to find the truth and this is the only way I know how.

Meeting with a prostitute on a public street day or night is not something I relish although I did worse on the seedy streets of New York when I went undercover as a prostitute. It invites unwanted attention, jeers from passing men, and an invitation for rude, vulgar men to sling insults and dirty language. It was the most humiliating and aggravating undercover assignment I ever undertook.
¹³

As the trolley car nears the stop, I see clusters of three or four people hanging together watching police activity on the far end of the bridge from the trolley stop. Police officers have lowered a rope on a pulley down to the riverbank.

Getting off the trolley, I keep my movements slow, dreading the worst.

A single gaslight streetlamp takes the edge off the darkness as a body wrapped in tarp with rope tied around it is hoisted up to the bridge from the rocky area next to the river. It has the eerie appearance of a ghost rising from the water.

I can’t tell if it is a man or woman in the tarp, but my guts knot out of fear that it is Sarah.

“What happened?” I ask three men standing together as they watch the police activity.

“A woman fell off the bridge,” one said.

“Killed ’erself,” offered another.

I quickened my step over the bridge and spot Chief Inspector Bradley near the morgue wagon the body is being loaded into.

“Is the dead woman a prostitute?” I ask him.

He does a double take and looks me up and down as if he’s puzzled as to how I suddenly materialized.

“Yes. Why do you ask?”

“May I see her face? I’d like to know if she’s the mother of the girl I told you died of brain fever at the spa.”

“This is police business.”

“I understand that, Chief Inspector. I’m offering to help you identify the woman.”

“We’ve had one identification. By a man who used her services in the past.” He hesitates, then takes a deep breath. “Do you know her name?”

“Her name is Sarah. Her daughter was Emma.”

Once again he eyes me with displeasure. In his mind, I am a nuisance who turns simple things complicated whether they need it or not.

“Let her see the woman’s face,” he instructs an officer.

I take a quick glance. She’s had a head injury and it bled profusely. I’ve seen blood before, but it’s never uglier than when it comes with violence.

“It’s her. Sarah.”

“Take it away,” he commands the attendants.

“Well,” I ask, after he ignores me and appears to be leaving, “are you going to investigate the daughter’s death now?”

He stops and gives me a long stare as if he’s deciding on what tack to take with me. I suspect I am getting what he considers to be velvet glove treatment because I am a woman and Inspector Abberline of Scotland Yard asked him to accommodate me.

“See that man over there?”

The man he indicates has the disreputable appearance of a saloon thug.

“That’s the woman’s pimp. He says she talked of killing herself all day. Seems
someone
gave her a quid and that bought her enough liquid courage to do the job proper.”

I take the blow without flinching and walk away, but my knees are shaking. How dare he! I didn’t kill the woman or assist her in killing herself. Life had taken everything from her worth living for when she lost her daughter. If it hadn’t been my money, it would have been someone else’s or she would have done herself in without liquid courage.

I’m just about to board the trolley when I spot Sarah’s pimp talking to another man under the single gaslight streetlamp.

The man he is huddled in conversation with is Burke, the ruffian with a taste for cowboy boots.

A coincidence? Or had Burke arranged the death of Sarah because she had become too loud with her agony?

I return to my hotel, cold to the bone, climb into bed, and pull the blankets over my head.

28

“Go away!”

I yell at the poor maid when she enters to clean my room. I am definitely going to have to leave her an extra gratuity for my rudeness. The problem is that I just don’t want to get out of bed and face the world. I want to stay with my head buried under the blankets and ignore the hazards and pitfalls of life.

I have never been a morning person, probably because I have a hard time getting to sleep at night. I believe it’s because my mind won’t let me go to sleep—I keep thinking of all the things I must do and how I might solve any problems at hand.

Last night the death of Sarah and loss of her daughter affected me. In such a short time, I have listened to a mother’s tragic tale of the loss of her child and seen two corpses that shouldn’t have happened.

Twice in a very short time I have been accused of contributing to the suicide of another person, one of whom was dear to me, the other a poor unfortunate for whom I had great empathy and compassion.

Another thing that kept me tossing and turning was seeing Sarah’s pimp, or perhaps more likely the man who simply identified himself as her pimp, chatting like old pals with Dr. Radic’s thug, Burke. Did Radic have Burke speak to the pimp about keeping Sarah quiet about the child? Was her death the way they silenced her?

The plot thickens … but where does it lead?

Hailey came to Bath. Didn’t go to the police but she had arrived too late to contact the officer in charge of the investigation. She went to the spa and tried unsuccessfully to get information from Lady Chilcott and her snooty friends.

What would she have done then? Gone inside to the spa? Yes, just as I had.

What happened after that? Days passed because she returned to London. And then back to Bath?

By midmorning my mind is frustrated with all the whos, whys, and whats to a puzzle I cannot get a handle on, that I willingly get out of bed, but it’s not enough to make me want to face the world and I mope around the room, slowly getting my clothes and my toilet together. “Putzing around” is what my mother calls it.

I bathe slowly and dally until the maid timidly taps on my door, slowly sticking her head in. Poor dear is fearful I’ll chop it off—again.

When I smile and convey my apologies, along with the extra tip, she opens up and starts chattering away—how relieved she is that I’m not mad at her because she’s had other guests blow up at her for no reason and then complain to her boss who would take it out of her pay; how guests have thrown things at her, yelling away and then leaving behind a horrible mess. If I had stayed I think I would have learnt all the dirty scuttlebutt about the guests and more about her rotten boss. Too bad I couldn’t interview her. I know the hotel maids in America would love to hear how things aren’t any different in England.

That’s when it hit me—a likely source for information about Hailey’s visit to Bath would be the hotel.

It makes sense. I chose this hotel for its location near to the train and because it’s modestly priced. Reporters travel on what we call “beans” and not steaks. Mr. Pulitzer and his ilk are not overly generous with expense money and I’m positive Hailey would have sought out accommodations that would get by the paper’s cashier without a lecture or a trip to Mr. Cockerill’s office. Even when the choice is between a trolley and a taxi, the trolley will almost always win out.

Now I just need to figure out how to approach the front desk clerk for I’m pretty certain he won’t give me information about another guest unless I provide him with a good reason.

Bless the gods for my cunning mind! I ingeniously think of one that I’m positive will make him eager to assist me.

“A reporter from my newspaper stayed here recently. Can you check her stay and let me know how much you are owed?” I give him Hailey’s name and the date I believe she was in Bath.

He eagerly disappears into the adjoining room and comes back with an accounting sheet.

“There is no balance. She paid for the night she stayed.”

“She stayed only one night?” That’s interesting.

“Quite right. One night. But you should check at the Fontaine. She had her luggage transferred to there.”

“Is that the hotel near the Aqua Vitae spa?”

“Yes it is. And a bit more pricey than we are.”

“How much more?”

“Twice as much for a single.”

“Really … did she say why she was leaving?”

“No, madam. And we offer excellent service for the price.”

I leave for the Fontaine, stretching my legs to get my mind going. I recall seeing the hotel. It looked small and quaint—and pricey. And that puzzles me. Why Hailey would change from a suitable hotel to one that would raise Cain with the paper’s cashier when she returned to New York makes no sense.

Her trip to Bath, with the necessity for train fare, hotel, and meals would have been questioned unless she had a major story to support the expenses. Even I will have to argue to get approval for beans for this excursion to Bath.

Pulitzer judges how good a story is by the amount of papers it sells and I’m still not convinced that the death of a British socialite while being treated by a health doctor would generate enough appeal for New York readers to support extraordinary efforts and expenses.

The Fontaine clerk is also eager to check the accounting register to see if Hailey left owing any money.

“She didn’t pay the bill herself, but her two-night stay was paid,” the clerk tells me.

“Really? My editor was under the impression it hadn’t been paid.”

“Well…” he looks at his books, “it’s understandable he would be under the impression she didn’t, because it was fully satisfied by the spa when it arranged for the room.”

“The spa … yes, I see, Aqua Vitae arranged for the room.”

“Yes, madam. They do that quite frequently for their spa patients.”

“We were also wondering about her luggage.”

I’m actually wondering where she went from the hotel—obviously back to London, but I want to make sure because it strikes me that it’s possible Hailey checked out of the hotel the very day she died. Inspector Abberline told me that the exact day of death couldn’t be determined because of the state of the body, so there is a range of several days rather than pinpointing one.

“You’ll have to speak to the porter.”

He taps the bell on the counter and an elderly man in a blue porter’s uniform comes forward.

I explain to him that I am tracing luggage that left the hotel for the train station and give him the date and a description of Hailey.

“Yes, I remember her. We don’t get many Americans, and almost never a young woman traveling alone. She requested her luggage be sent to the station. But we’re not responsible for the luggage after it reaches the train station.”

“Did she happen to mention which train she was taking?”

“No, madam, I never spoke to her. I was just told to take the luggage to the station. Westbound.”

“Which city?”

“Could be Bristol, madam, or all the way down to Exeter in Devonshire.”

“Devonshire…” I glance at a railroad map on the wall behind the front counter. “Is that where the moors are?”

“Yes, madam. Exeter is in the Dartmoor area.”

“Did you, uh, happen to speak to Miss McGuire at the station?”

“No, madam, I merely delivered the luggage to the baggage room. As I said, the hotel is not responsible for lost luggage. You should speak to the head porter at the station if you wish to file a claim.”

“One last thing,” I give him a crown coin, “did you see Miss McGuire when she checked in?”

“Yes.”

“What was her mood?”

“Her mood?”

“How did she appear to you? Sad? Happy?”

“She was a very nice woman, very polite, perhaps a bit more lively than the young women I usually encounter.”

“What do mean by lively?”

“Bubbly, madam, smiling, laughed easily, full of life.”

An apt description of Hailey. My head is buzzing when I leave the hotel, trying to make sense of what I have learnt.