The Fall Of White City (Gilded Age Mysteries Book 1) (27 page)

“So anyway, Mr. Sidley said he knew some people who might be able to tell what had happened. He told me not to give up hope until he could find out the truth. In the meantime, I still went to the beer garden every night, but Jonathan was never there. And every night when I came home late, Mama would spit on the floor and call me a whore.”

Freddie remained at the window, looking down at the street. He saw a man, obviously a tourist dressed in his Sunday-best checkered suit, wandering up and down
Clark Street
trying to decide which brothel to visit. Freddie turned away and sat down next to
Rosa
.

“What did you do then?” he asked distractedly.

“I might have gone on doing the same thing ‘til doomsday, except one night at about ten o’clock I was sitting at a table alone when who should walk up to me but Mr. Sidley.”

“What a small world.”

“Oh, it was no accident, mister. He had followed me there.”

“Why?”

“Well, as I told you, he was a true friend to me. He knew I went there every night, and he wanted to tell me as soon as he found out anything about Jonathan. From the look on his face when he walked up to the table, I knew it wasn’t good. ‘I’m sorry,
Rosa
,’ he says to me, ‘but it’s bad news about your gentleman.’ I remember my heart was pounding so hard I thought it would burst. Mr. Sidley told me he found out Jonathan was engaged to marry some society lady and that it was announced in one of the suburban papers.”

“Hmmm.” Freddie was still trying to make sense of Sidley’s role in the charade.

“I was so upset by this time, I nearly fainted from the shock. Mr. Sidley jumped up and said he was going to get me something to revive me. He came back with a glass of brandy.”

“That’s rather a strong drink for a young girl."

“Yes, that was the first time I ever drank it. Awful-tasting stuff. So bitter it makes absinthe taste like honey.”

“Bitter, you say?”

“Yes, I’ll never forget the taste of it, and I’ve never been able to bring myself to drink it again since that night because it would remind me... ,” she trailed off, distracted.

Freddie had to prod her to continue. “Did Sidley offer to take you home then?”

“Well, what happened next was strange. I stood up to go, but the room was spinning. I could hardly walk and he had to help me out the door. When we got outside, I still was doing poorly from the shock, so he said to me, ‘
Rosa
, you’re not well. You can’t go home in this condition.’ And didn’t I know it. Mama would have beat the daylights out of me and then prayed over me a month after. So I asked him what I should do.

“‘Come with me,’ he says. ‘I know a boarding house nearby. It’s one I used to live in when I first came to
Chicago
. The lady who owns it will let you stay the night, no questions asked. You can tell your mother tomorrow that you stayed overnight at Mast House in one of the guest rooms.’ So we walked about three blocks to the house he mentioned. All the while I kept thinking to myself, how could Jonathan do this to me? How could he say he wanted to marry me and then turn around and marry somebody else? I remember I felt dizzy and weak and sick to my stomach. Mr. Sidley said he thought it was the shock and that I shouldn’t distress myself any further about it.”

As the memory of the night came flooding back,
Rosa
grew more agitated. She stood up and began pacing back and forth in front of the window. Freddie merely watched her without interrupting.

“When we got to the boarding house, the lady who owned it opened the door. She recognized Mr. Sidley because she called him by name. He told her I was ill and needed a place to stay for the night. He even offered to pay for the room since I only had enough money with me for carfare. So Mrs. Hatch, that was the owner’s name, she led us to a room on the first floor, at the back of the house. She told us to keep quiet because all the other boarders were asleep. By this time it must have been almost midnight. I just kept feeling sicker and sicker and when we got to the room, it was spinning. Mr. Sidley asked her if she had anything to quiet my nerves and she said yes there was a special cordial she kept for just such purposes. He was so kind to me. Sat there with me and waited until she came back. He insisted that I finish every drop of the cordial, though I thought it tasted just as bad as the brandy. It’s funny how your feelings can affect your senses that way.”

“Yes, funny.” Freddie wasn’t laughing.

“So Mr. Sidley and Mrs. Hatch sat with me awhile, but I seemed to be feeling worse instead of better. Finally at about one in the morning, Mr. Sidley got up to leave. He said I needed my rest, so Mrs. Hatch let him out the back door because there was a separate entrance right off the room where I was staying. He said he’d come back for me in the morning to see if I was well enough to go back home.”

“Very solicitous.” Freddie still wasn’t sure what game Sidley had been playing, but he was unwilling to risk a question that might arouse the girl’s suspicions. Finally he asked, “Did you sleep well?”

Rosa shook her head. “No, not at all. I kept having terrible dreams. I felt like I’d been locked in the room and there was a man there with me. I couldn’t get out. Every time I thought I called for help, I couldn’t hear the sound of my own voice. It was like drowning in a nightmare, and the man in the dream—his face kept changing. First it was Jonathan. Then he seemed to look like Mr. Sidley. It was all so jumbled up and confusing. But then, when I woke up, I realized it hadn’t been a dream at all.”

“What?”

“When I woke up, I felt numb all over. My head was pounding so hard I felt it would split in two. My clothes were lying all over the room, but I wasn’t wearing anything. When I went to pick my blouse up off the floor I saw that it had been torn, but I couldn’t remember how. I reached around my neck for the pendant, but it was gone. I felt as if I had lost my mind. I started searching everywhere. But then Mrs. Hatch burst into the room, and she was furious. She had Mr. Sidley with her. I scrambled to put on some clothes, but she tried to drag me out of the room before I was dressed. Mr. Sidley stopped her, though.”

“What on earth had happened?”

“I didn’t know it at the time, but it came out in bits and pieces. Mrs. Hatch was in a rage. She turns to Mr. Sidley and says, ‘I run a respectable house, Mr. Sidley. I welcome your friend into my home and this is how she repays an act of kindness!’

“Well, I can tell you I didn’t know what to say or think. Mr. Sidley looked just as shocked as I did. ‘Why, what’s wrong, Mrs. Hatch?’ he says to her.

“‘Just this,’ she says, still in a rage, ‘after you left, she went out like a common streetwalker because she brought a man back to this room—into my house, sir! What can you say to that!’

“Mr. Sidley, he just stood there, and then he looks at me like I had played him for a fool. ‘Is this true,
Rosa
?’ he says. My head felt as if it was being squeezed in a metal vise, and I couldn’t think. I couldn’t remember and yet, somehow I knew there had been a man there. I just couldn’t remember how he came to be there in the first place. ‘I don’t remember,’ I said. ‘Please stop asking me. I don’t know!’”

Rosa was in a frenzy by now, reliving the episode. She was still pacing and Freddie stood up to catch her in mid-stride. “
Rosa
, you must calm down. It happened a long time ago. Here sit down by me. Take a deep breath and try to relax.”

His words helped to pull her out of the memory, but still she had begun to cry. “I couldn’t remember anything and yet something inside of me said that it was true. My body ached everywhere. There were bruises on my arms, and I don’t remember how I got them. So it had to be true.”

She wept for a few minutes, and Freddie didn’t attempt to push her forward in her story until she was ready. Finally she continued. “Well, Mrs. Hatch didn’t believe me, and as soon as I was dressed she pitched the both of us out the back door. She told Mr. Sidley never to come back, and she said if she ever saw me anywhere near her place she’d report me to the police for soliciting.”

“But how did she know you’d brought a man back to your room?”

“She said she saw him sneaking out the back as she came down the stairs to prepare breakfast. She called him out and he told her he had been with me—that I had invited him in to spend the night. That I said something about needing to pay somebody back for something he did to me.”

“Do you remember that part of it?”

“No, not at all,”
Rosa
said desperately. “I’ve gone over it a thousand times in my mind, and it’s as if my memory has been erased. And then there was what happened to the pendant.”

“What happened to it?”

“Well, after Mrs. Hatch threw us out, I was still upset and I told Mr. Sidley I had lost the pendant and he says, ‘
Rosa
, don’t you remember what you did with it?’

“‘No,’ I said. ‘Not a bit.’ Well, he looked really surprised and he said, ‘Why, you smashed it in the gutter before we came up to the house.’ ‘But I couldn’t have done that!’ I said. ‘I never would have done such a thing!’

“He just stared at me as if I had gone crazy. ‘Look I’ll show you,’ he said. Then he led me around to the front of the house. There in the gutter, I found the chain and bits of smashed porcelain in the street. He told me that before we got to Mrs. Hatch’s I was carrying on and talking pretty wild about how I’d get my revenge on Jonathan for what he did to me. He told me that I stopped in the street and ripped the chain off my neck. ‘I’ll start with this,’ was what I said, and I threw it down and smashed the china rose against the curb. And sure enough, there it was lying in the street. I bent down and picked up the chain to keep.”

“Did he know anything about the man you were with?”

Rosa shrugged. “No, just what Mrs. Hatch told him. It must have been a stranger.” She laughed again bitterly. “Just the first of many strangers.”

“
Rosa
, don’t talk like that!”

The girl looked cynically in his direction. “If I could betray somebody who loved me, there’s nothing I couldn’t sink to.”

“But you’re forgetting. He betrayed you.”

She began to cry again—not violently, but tears ran silently down her cheeks. “No, he didn’t. That was the worst part of it. He never betrayed me at all. Mr. Sidley was wrong.”

Freddie sat open-mouthed in astonishment at the twists her story had taken. Knowing
Blackthorne’s
character as he did, he couldn’t believe his ears. “What do you mean Sidley was wrong?”

“He had gotten bad information from somebody. There was an engagement, but Jonathan never intended to go through with the marriage. That was just to buy some time. He had come to meet me that very same night—the night Mr. Sidley showed up. When he saw the two of us together, he didn’t know what to think. He couldn’t afford to be seen by anyone else, so he waited outside until we came out and he followed us. He saw everything.”

“What do you mean, he saw everything?”

“I mean he was outside there the whole night and saw everything I did.”

“But how do you know that?”

Rosa got up and wordlessly walked over to the dresser. She opened the top drawer and took out a creased, stained envelope, which she handed to Freddie. “A week after everything happened, I got this letter in the mail.”

The envelope bore no return address. The note inside was only a page long but quite effective in destroying
Rosa
’s hopes. Freddie read:

Rosa,

It pains me beyond belief to have to write these words to you. I was being watched too closely to reach you any sooner, and when I managed to break away I found you in our usual spot with another man. Because I had no desire to be recognized, I determined to wait outside until I could speak to you privately. Instead of going home, I saw you go with your new friend to a house where I can only presume you had a rendezvous. I saw you call for revenge as you smashed the rose necklace I had given you. Still I waited, thinking that I might be able to see you alone after the man left in order to explain myself. To my surprise, I saw you invite the attentions of a stranger and bring him back to what I now can only assume was a house of ill repute. Apparently, I was as much mistaken in your love as I was in your virtue. You could not wait for word from me. You had no faith that I would make good on my promise. Instead you chose to betray me with the first man you could find. No matter how great my love for you once was, such a breach of trust is unforgivable. Do not try to explain, because I would have difficulty believing whatever you might have to say. I cannot bear to see you again. Do not attempt ever to find me.

Farewell,

Jonathan

Freddie put the letter back in its envelope. All he could think to say was, “You must have been shocked to receive this.”

“I think a part of me died that day. I couldn’t plead my case with him. I didn’t know where to find him. Besides, he confirmed what Mrs. Hatch and Mr. Sidley had already told me I had done. It seemed as if I didn’t know myself at all till then. Didn’t know just how evil I could be.”

“No, Rosa, not evil. Don’t say that.”

“Yes, evil! I betrayed the only man who ever loved me, don’t you see? What could be worse than that? Mama was right about me all along. I never told her about this, but I just packed up and left home that day.”