Indigo Christmas (22 page)

“Yes, ma'am. It's a poser, isn't it? How do you think Mr. Sean's knife got there in the ashes?”

Hilda was touched by Eileen's loyalty. “Then you do not think he dropped it there?”

“He couldn't have. He was never there. He said so.” Eileen's faith was unshakeable.

Hilda drank coffee and racked her brain. “Could he have lent it to someone? A fireman, perhaps, who might have dropped it fighting the fire? He has friends in the fire department. The sergeant said so today, and I think I already knew of it.”

“Not that knife, he wouldn't've let nobody borrow. It was his favorite thing. It's a good one, and besides, Norah gave it to him, and you know he thinks the sun rises and sets on Norah.”

“How do you know that, about the knife and how much he liked it?”

Eileen shrugged. “Family talk. If an Irishman in this town isn't a relation, then he's a friend of a relation, or a relation of a friend—and we all go to St. Pat's. We all more or less know what's goin' on amongst the Irish. And it was a fine present, silvered and initialed and all. We reckoned Norah must've saved up for a long time, even if it did come from Sears, Roebuck.”

“Perhaps he lost it and someone—”

“No, ma'am. Beggin' your pardon, but he would've said. He'd sooner lose his right eye than that knife.”

Hilda grimaced. “You had better not say that to anyone else, Eileen. For if he did not lose it or lend it, there seems to be only one way it could have been dropped in the barn. I would like to talk to him, learn if he went to the farm after the fire and lost it then, but I will not be able to talk to him if he is in jail. And this time I do not think it will be so easy to get him out.”

“You must, ma'am! You must get him out! He never killed nobody, and his poor lady, and the baby—what will they do? You must help him, ma'am!” Eileen was near tears.

“I will do my best, Eileen.” Hilda tried to put confidence into her voice, but Eileen's expression told her she had not succeeded. “Do not tell Norah what has happened. There is no need for her to know just yet. Let her rest and build up her strength while she can.”

Drearily Hilda dressed again, this time in an old skirt and waist that did not require stays. Let the doorman at the Oliver Hotel think what he wanted.

She encountered Mr. O'Rourke in the drive, where he was polishing one of the brass carriage lamps. “Was you goin' out, madam?” he asked. “On account of, the horses are needin' some exercise.”

“I am, Mr. O'Rourke, but I was going to ride the streetcar. I do not know if the streets are clear enough for a carriage. ”

“Downtown, they are. Mr. Patrick, he walked to the store, but Mr. Malloy went in his coach, and when his coachman come back this way he stopped to chat. English, he is, but he's not got his nose so high in the air as some of them English. He said the streets are fine as far as the river, maybe not so good on the other side.” Mr. O'Rourke, looking jaunty in his new coat and hat, seemed inclined to friendliness this morning.

“I go to Fire Station Five. It is near the river, on Sample Street.”

The coachman cocked his head. “Might be all right, might not. I reckon they'd clear the streets for the fire wagons. I'm willin' to try if you are.”

“Thank you, Mr. O'Rourke.” Hilda nodded gravely.

“You'll want to wait inside while I get the horses hitched up, ma'am. Perishin' cold it is, never mind all the sunshine. And if ye can't bring yerself to call me O'Rourke,” he added as he turned away, “me given name's Kevin.”

There was not a great deal of traffic on the streets, and what there was moved in an eerie quiet. Snow had been shoveled off the streets, but enough was left to soften the footfalls of the horses and the rattle of steel tires against pavement. Mr. O'Rourke—Kevin, Hilda reminded herself—kept the horses to a moderate pace, but the wind still whistled past, and made Hilda very glad for the plush carriage robe tucked around her. Indeed, if she was going to travel often in winter, perhaps a carriage heater would be a good idea.

Hilda was thinking about creature comforts, deliberately thinking about them and about the beauty of the snow-covered city, to avoid thinking about other things. About Sean under arrest for murder. About Norah, who would soon be cast once more into despair, and her helpless week-old infant. What would happen to them if Sean—face it, Hilda—if Sean were hanged for murder?

“Here we are, ma'am, safe and sound. Was you wantin' me to wait, or come back?”

Hilda roused herself from her despondent thoughts and freed herself from the carriage robe. “Wait, I think, please, Mr.—Kevin. I do not know how long I might be.”

“Yes, ma'am. I'll be walkin' the horses up and down a bit, to keep 'em warm, but I'll keep watch.” He handed her down, and she knocked on the door of the firehouse. Patrick, in his years as a fireman, had taught her that a woman did not simply walk in to the place where the men lived during their shift. A married woman could visit more readily—and with less scandal—than an unmarried girl, but there were still courtesies to be observed.

The fireman who answered the door knew Hilda by sight, though she did not know him. The city's firefighters, who worked together on big blazes no matter which station they belonged to, were a close-knit group. Facing death together will do that to people, and every fire was a possible death trap. So they all knew that Patrick Cavanaugh had finally won the beautiful Swedish bride he had courted for so long. They knew, too, that marriage had not dampened her enthusiasm for poking her nose into crime.

“Mrs. Cavanaugh! We've been expecting you. Come in, and forgive the untidiness. We had a fire early this morning, and we're still sorting ourselves out.”

Hilda frowned. “You have expected me? But I did not tell anyone I was coming here.”

“We knew you would, though. We knew you'd find out it was one of our men found that billfold, and you'd want to know all about it. Sit down, ma'am—that there's the best chair—and I'll just go and get Joe Brady. He's the one as found it.”

This was better than she had dared hope. Now if only the man's answers were the right ones!

Joe Brady, when he came into the room, looked tired. He was shrugging into a coat, but he was unshaven and wore no collar. “I'm sorry, ma'am. I'm not fit to be seen by a lady, but I haven't had time to clean myself up properly.”

“Was it a bad fire, Mr. Brady?” Hilda's voice was sympathetic. Fighting a fire in last night's bitter cold wouldn't have been any fun.

“Not what you'd call bad. Some fool a couple of houses down from here put ashes outside before they were dead, and the wind fanned them up and caught the shed on fire. Not much to it, but the cold was somethin' cruel, and the wind, and we had to make sure the other houses didn't catch, or the school.” Franklin School was just across the street from the fire station, and even at night, with no one in the building, the firemen would, Hilda knew, have done all they could to preserve it. Schools were important.

Joe Brady yawned hugely, covering his mouth with his hand and making Hilda want to yawn, too. “Sorry, ma'am. You'll be wanting to know about the billfold.”

She pulled herself together and nodded. “Yes, please. Especially I want to know where you found it.”

“It was in the drive, well away from the barn. We'd pulled in with the wagons, the pumper and the hose wagon, and I was unhitching the horses and leading them away so they weren't so close to the blaze. They're trained about fire, you know, but they get nervous all the same, and we can't have them running away or pulling the wagons around. So I had got one of 'em out of the traces and away safe, and I was tyin' him to the fence when I dropped one of the reins. And when I stooped down to pick it up I saw somethin' lyin' on the ground. I just shoved it in my pocket, havin' other things to think about at the time, but later, when the horses were okay, I thought about it and took a look. It didn't look like it was worth much, kind of worn, and no money in it, but I thought somebody might miss it, and maybe I'd better put it back where I found it. So I did.”

“And were the other men still there? The ones from the next farm, who had come to try to help?”

“They were just beginnin' to head back across the field. They'd stuck around for a while, thinkin' to help us out, but if a man's not a firefighter, he gets in the way more than he helps. Not that they weren't goodhearted and all, but they were more trouble than they were worth, and I guess the station chief finally told 'em so.”

“Did you see Mr. O'Neill pick up the billfold?”

“No, ma'am. I went back to the fire, and we were pretty busy for a while there. A barn fire's always bad, with so much straw around, and we had all we could do to keep it from spreadin' to the house. Lucky there was no animals inside, but we all feel real bad about the hired man. If we'd knowed he was there, we could've got him out easy. He was up in the loft, well away from the worst of it. But we didn't, and that's all there is to it.”

That was, Hilda could see, very far from all there was to it. Joe Brady would probably carry that grief and guilt with him to the end of his days. Every fireman hates it when even an animal dies in a fire, and when a person is lost a little of the fireman dies, too. They hide it, of course, don't talk about it, pretend the canker isn't there, but it eats at them. The more sensitive ones can't take it. They get out of the brigade.

Patrick had nightmares now and then. He didn't like to talk about them the next day, but one day Hilda was going to make him talk, talk it out of his system, maybe. Then she would remind him about the baby whose life he'd saved in a boardinghouse fire, about the horses he'd led from a burning stable, about the fellow fireman who owed his life to Patrick's quick actions when a fire wagon overturned.

Hilda knew better than to ask Joe Brady to talk about the dead hired hand. Instead she asked her last question. “Mr. Brady, I have heard there were some initials on the billfold. Can you tell me anything about that?”

But there her luck ran out. “No, ma'am. I only saw it for a minute or two. The light was bad and I was in the middle of fightin' a pretty awful fire. I thought maybe I saw what might have been initials, but they was worn off. And then Sean found it, and when he came back, later, to ask if one of us had dropped it, the fire was almost out, and there wasn't no light at all. I couldn't tell you what those initials were to save me.”

“Oh. Well, that is too bad, but I can maybe find out somehow.”

“The police'll have it now, I reckon. Maybe they'll tell you. You're friends with that Lefkowicz, aren't you?”

Hilda stood. Her face suddenly felt stiff. She said nothing for a moment, and then decided. There was no reason not to tell him. Everyone would know soon enough. “I am not certain that Sergeant Lefkowicz would help me. He came to my house this morning to arrest Sean O'Neill for murder.”

Mr. Brady had of course stood when Hilda did, and now his mouth dropped open. “But that's impossible! O'Neill couldn't have set that fire! We told the police that. It got started while he and the others were still workin' on the new barn next door. And he didn't steal anything from that billfold, neither. There was nothin' in it to begin with. What do the fools think they're doin?”

“They found something that belonged to Sean—his pocketknife—in the remains of the barn. They think he dropped it when he started the fire.”

Mr. Brady frowned. “When did they find that? I didn't hear about them findin' anything, and believe me, as soon as that fellow Robert Jenkins started kickin' up a fuss about the fire not being an accident, they looked, the police and the fire department, too.”

Hilda tried to think. “I believe Sergeant Lefkowicz said it was this morning that they found it.”

“Why?”

“Excuse me?”

“Why did they—look, ma'am, do you mind if we sit down? My mind's whirlin' and I'd feel a lot better off my feet.”

Hilda sat, and Mr. Brady folded into the chair opposite her rather like a limp doll. “Look, here. This don't make no sense. It snowed hard day before yesterday, right?”

She nodded, still puzzled.

“And yesterday couldn't nobody get out, hardly. We was all worried for fear there'd be a bad fire we couldn't get to, 'cause the roads were all full of snow. Took us, the brigade, I mean, and the city men, too, all day to clean things up enough so we'd be able to get where we needed to go. And you can bet the roads farther away from the middle of town are still just snow banks, not to mention the country.”

Hilda was beginning to get a glimmer of Mr. Brady's thinking.

“So will you tell me why in tarnation the police would take it into their heads to go out to Miller's farm this mornin', all of a sudden, and poke through the ashes?”

Only 11 Trading Days Before Christmas…
You can buy at 25¢ each: Dolls, Friction
Boats, Magic Lanterns, Steam Engine
Attachments, Chimes…

—Geo. Wyman & Co. ad
    South Bend
Tribune
   
December 8, 1904

 

 

23

H
ILDA THOUGHT ABOUT that all the way to the Oliver Hotel. It was an excellent question, and she was furious with herself for not thinking of it. of course it was absurd that the police fought their way out to the farm on a day when ordinary travel was nearly impossible. Why not wait until the roads were clear, next week sometime? Why, for that matter, go out there at all? Joe Brady had said it. The barn had been thoroughly searched when Robert Jenkins had brought the accusation of murder. Why hadn't anyone found the pocketknife then?

Because it wasn't there
, said a voice somewhere deep in Hilda's head.