“You did just spend time with my mother,” Jack said. “What do you think?”
At the corner of Fifth Avenue and Washington Square Park they worked their way through a crowd of children watching a puppet show, past an organ grinder whose monkey held out a greasy old hat for coins, newsboys hawking their papers, and pushcarts displaying cans of tobacco, cigars, hard candy, handkerchiefs, small Italian and American flags, peanuts, inexpensive jewelry, and religious medals. When they were free of the worst of the crowds Jack took her hand and they walked north.
“Oscar is always uneasy on this part of Fifth Avenue,” Jack said. “He got caught up in the draft riots around here, just a couple days after he joined the force. Do you remember anything about them?”
“I remember the noise, but that’s all. We were a household of women and children and we locked ourselves in, you see. Uncle Quinlan was dead, Mr. Lee was in the army somewhere in the south, and Margaret had come to stay with her boys. We weren’t allowed out of the house during the riots, not even in the garden. Auntie wouldn’t even let us see the newspapers once it was all over.”
Jack looked almost relieved to hear this.
“So, Savard,” he said. “Where exactly are we going?”
“Patience. Just a couple more minutes.”
She would have raised the subject of the suspicious ad in the paper, but Anna had begun to doubt her suspicions and could no longer see a connection between the newspaper clippings and the deaths of three women. She would only embarrass herself, like a child who came into the hospital with a scratch and demanded a plaster cast.
Then again, Jack wouldn’t laugh at her, even if there was nothing of merit in what she wanted to show him. He would listen, and they would talk about it. Then, she was almost certain, he would put her suspicions to rest and they would go back to listen to the band and watch the children playing as the day slipped away to evening.
As they turned west on Ninth Street Jack said, “We talked to Archer Campbell this morning, Oscar and me.”
Anna was glad of the distraction. “About the money question?”
“Mostly. She had over a thousand dollars with her when she left with the boys that morning, but there was no trace of it on her person or in the house when it was searched after her death. Campbell thinks she paid somebody to take the boys in.”
Anna considered. “So you were correct, she had enough money to pay a reputable doctor. But how would she find someone to take four young boys she could trust? A thousand dollars is a great deal of money, but at the very minimum that would have to last fifteen years.”
Jack said, “We don’t know where the money went. The house was empty for a good while once the ambulance took her away, and then there’s the ambulance ride itself. I’ve arrested more than one orderly with pockets full of cash and jewelry they took off their charges. Chances are slim we’ll be able to pin anything down, but it’s worth looking at.”
Jefferson Market came into view, all the stalls empty and shuttered on a Sunday afternoon. In a few hours the aisles would be full of street arabs and the outdoor poor, who would fight to keep a spot under that leaky tin roof. A few were already standing nearby in the shadow of the Sixth Avenue elevated train tracks. At the sight of Jack they slipped away around corners.
Behind the market the redbrick bulk of the Jefferson Court House loomed, proud and fanciful both in an island of small houses and tenements, home mostly to skilled workers and small business owners.
“Now I’m even more curious,” Jack said, teasing. “You can’t mean to take me on a tour of the courthouse? The police station?”
Anna said, “No, look there.”
She nodded toward the storefronts that faced the market. A tailor, a cobbler, a greengrocer, a steam laundry. Between the grocer and the cobbler one shop stood out, a little wider than the others, the awning newer, the show windows spotless. The weathered sign was the only thing that gave away the shop’s age, old-fashioned script spelling out the name: Geo. Smithson, Apothecary.
There were dozens of druggist’s shops like it in the city, but Smithson was one of the oldest and most respected. The shop was closed on a Sunday, of course. But she had counted on that.
Jack was watching her, curious but patient.
She took the newspaper cuttings from her reticule and handed him the one on the top.
“I came across that first advertisement by accident early today. I was a little later than I should have been to the picnic because I stopped to buy different newspapers to look through.” She fanned out the other clippings for him to see.
“Of the five I bought, four had identical ads.”