Was it only a few months ago that I had come across the Atlantic in such a ship? Already it seemed a lifetime away. I felt that I belonged to this big, vibrant city, and my past life in Ireland was like a dream. I breathed in the brisk, salty wind off the Atlantic and felt a pang of longing for my home. Only one brief pang, though. Now back to the case in hand, I told myself severely. How was I going to find out more about these people and how was I going to approach them?
Then I had a flash of inspiration. Miss Van Woekem! If anyone knew about New York society, it was she. And she had asked me to pay a call on her from time to time. Now that her goddaughter would be long gone back to White Plains, thus avoiding any embarrassing encounters, this might be a perfect opportunity.
The next morning, dressed in my smart new costume, new shoes, my hair pinned back under a jaunty new beige hat I had bought on a whim after seeing it in Wanamaker's window, I presented my calling card to Miss Van Woekem's maid. I was invited into the hallway and soon summoned to the sitting room on the first floor.
“Well, this is a pleasant surprise,” the old lady greeted me. “I hardly recognized you. Quite an improvement on those dreadful garments you were wearing the last time I saw you. So you've managed to establish yourself in business? Well done.” She nodded, then glanced again at my card. “Already a junior partner too. My, my.” There was amusement in her voice, as if she sensed that the junior partner title had been of my own creation. “Most kind of you to take time out of your busy schedule to visit an old woman. You'll take tea, of course?”
A tray was brought. For the first time in my life I sat in the home of a patrician being treated as an equal.
“So tell me”—she leaned forward confidentially— “are you working on any interesting cases?”
“I am, as a matter of fact.” I leaned toward her and lowered my voice. “One involving your next-door neighbor, in fact.”
“That woman? I'm not at all surprised. An actress, she calls herself.” Miss Van Woekem snorted. “Actress, my foot. The procession of men up and down those stairs requires a new stair carpet at least once a year. Which one is it now?”
“I'm not really at liberty to say,” I said. “Client confidentiality, you know.”
“I shouldn't think there is anything in the least confidential about that woman's activities. She flaunts herself around town with half the male population. Why, when I was at the theater last week, she was sitting at the front of a box with that English lord, giggling and talking loudly so as to attract attention to herself.”
“Would that be Lord Edgemont?” I asked casually.
“That's the one. Of course those two deserve each other. He'd chase anything in skirts. They say he's gone through the entire family fortune. Hardly ever goes home to administer his estates. And his father was such a good man too. Funny how there is always a throwback.”
“So he spends all his time in New York these days, does he?” I took a delicate bite of watercress sandwich.
“Keeps a permanent suite at the Waldorf Astoria, so I understand, although how long before he gets thrown out for not paying his bills, I couldn't say. And when he's finally bankrupt you can bet that Miss Kitty next door will drop him like a hot coal.” She gave a satisfied chuckle.
So far, so good. I took another bite of watercress sandwich and was emboldened to ask, “What do you know of Angus MacDonald?”
She looked surprised. “His name hasn't come up in connection with Kitty Le Grange, surely?”
“Oh, no. This is something quite different.”
“Thank God for that. The old man would drop dead of a heart attack if he heard that his son was involved with actresses.”
“The old man?”
“Angus MacDonald is the son of J.P. Surely you knew that? J.P. MacDonald, the shipping and railway magnate? I've no time for him myself. J.P. likes to think that he's now one of the Four Hundred. Of course he's not. He might be rich as Croesus, but he's still the son of a Scottish peasant. He's actually proud of coming over here with nothing and working his way to a fortune. He's kept those dreadful Scottish peasant Calvinist values, too. Won't touch alcohol. Won't accept any social invitations on Sundays. So young Angus has been misbehaving, has he? Papa won't like that at all.”
I left the house on Gramercy Park some half hour later with all the information I needed and a possible motive for murder too. If Angus MacDonald was the only son of a strict Calvinist millionaire and about to be sued for divorce, he might do anything to keep the evidence from getting to his father.
Twelve