For a split second Jack thought Jimmy might take offense, which meant that he was on edge, which meant there really was something to talk about and in fact, he didn’t waste words.
“We had a lady check in last Tuesday, someone we see now and then with her husband, but this time she was alone. She said she was waiting for her sister to join her, but no sister ever showed up.”
Jack took out his notebook and let Oscar lead with the questions. Now and then he glanced up to gauge the look on Breslin’s face, and saw nothing more than the professional demeanor of the general manager of one of Manhattan’s most exclusive hotels. The guest—he identified the missing woman as Abigail Liljestr?m, the wife of a Buffalo industrialist—had gone out early on Wednesday and asked that no one disturb her room until she specifically requested service. She hadn’t been seen in the dining hall or any other part of the hotel since.
“So that’s five days that nobody’s seen her,” Oscar clarified.
Jimmy nodded. “This morning the matron came to mention it to me, with a copy of the newspaper article—” He dug it out of his pocket to show them. “That’s when I called it in.”
“The matron recognized the description in the article as Abigail Liljestr?m?”
“She did. So I came up here to see. There’s no sign of trouble but she hasn’t been here for days.”
Jack thought for a moment. “We’ll need to talk to the matron and to any of the maids who dealt with Mrs. Liljestr?m directly. The desk clerks too. We’ll want one or two of them to come to the morgue to identify the body.”
“Should I send a telegram to her family?”
“We’ll do that,” Jack said. “But not until we’re sure what we have.”
? ? ?
JACK STAYED BEHIND to go through the room while Oscar took two maids and the matron to the morgue. It wasn’t something Jack especially liked doing, but he had a knack for the work, a way of piecing things together that he often didn’t understand himself.
He went through the clothes hanging in the wardrobe: day dresses, carriage and walking dresses, a robe, a nightdress, a pelisse all in silks and velvets and fine wools. He checked the pocketbooks and came up with an unaddressed envelope, a few coins, a handkerchief, but no identification. The clothes were very fine, but it was the shoes that made him pause. They were custom made for someone with very small feet, leather dyed purple or green or red, some with mother-of-pearl buckles, others with silk flowers. There were three hatboxes, and a trunk with fitted drawers for handkerchiefs, stockings, garters, ribbons, and undergarments. It occurred to him that one of the maids must have helped her lace her stays, but none of the three they had interviewed mentioned that particular service.
There were a few books on the bedside table along with framed photos: an older couple, a balding man of thirty-five or forty who was probably the industrialist husband, and two children, a boy and a girl. Well fed, overdressed, looking solemnly into the camera.
He found nothing in the drawers of the desk or dresser and finished quickly, skipped the elevator and ran down six flights to talk to the desk clerk. Thinking to himself that the industrialist had gone wrong somewhere, to have let it come to this.
32
THE SISTERS OF Charity did not tolerate idleness. Thinking back, Elise couldn’t ever remember having nothing to do; in the convent the novitiates scrubbed floors, peeled potatoes, carried slop buckets; later there was work in the infirmaries, learning how to clean and bind wounds, dispense medications, handle sick children. If she hadn’t shown an affinity for the infirmary she might have ended up in the laundry, starching and ironing habits. The idea could still make her shudder.
She had never known what it was to be idle, but now with her third full day as Nurse Mercier at the New Amsterdam, she really understood what it meant to be busy. The children she had cared for at the orphanage had come into the infirmary with colds, infected scrapes, sore ears, lice, rickets, upset stomachs. Children with scarlet fever or broken bones or needing surgery had been transferred to St. Vincent’s, where doctors took over. She rarely learned what had happened, and asking was discouraged.