Still the man wouldn’t answer. He was looking down at his shoes, which were of a scuffed leather in need of a good polish.
Sheriff Heath said, “If she’s not your girl, then I suppose we’ll have to charge her with breaking and entering, because the police found her inside a room rented to you and your wife. Where is Mrs. Leo?”
“That’s her,” he said at last, glancing briefly at Minnie. “We were all fixed to get married. I even got the license. I’ll show it to you.”
That drew a snort from Minnie. Constance nudged her to stay quiet.
Detective Courter came around from the street with two other men from the prosecutor’s office. He stopped only briefly when he saw Constance, then turned very deliberately away and said to the sheriff, “We’ve had reports of several men going in and out of the young lady’s room. She’s been seen with new jewelry and other little trinkets of the sort a man might give to a girl after an evening together.”
“That’s a lie!” Minnie cried. “Tell them, Tony!”
“I don’t know nothing about that,” Tony mumbled. The other officers stared at Minnie with a mixture of pity and disgust.
“I’ve heard enough,” Constance said, just loud enough for Courter to hear it. She led Minnie to the back of the bakery.
The detective continued as if nothing had happened. “I don’t like to think what part this fellow Leo played in it,” he announced, as if in a courtroom, “but I’ve got an idea about that.”
Minnie stiffened beside her and Constance thought she might run. “Go on,” she said quietly, and let Minnie show her the way up the back stairs to her room, which sat at the front of the building, looking out over Main Street. There was another room in the back of the building, and a shared toilet between them.
The police had left the door to Minnie’s room open. When they walked in, Constance let go of the girl’s arm, and she went over and sat on the bed. There was a silkoline cover over the mattress that would have been pretty once, but it had started to fray. All around the room, Constance saw evidence of Minnie’s attempts to make it a home: the rosebuds painted on an enamel teapot, the lace hung over the window, the picture of a winter scene in Central Park cut out of a magazine and pasted inside a frame.
But nothing could hide the fact of her impoverishment. Minnie had only a single work dress and sweater hung from a peg on the door, and Constance saw nothing to eat but a box of crackers and a tin of potted meat. There was a sour smell of sickness in the room that Constance now realized came from the front of Minnie’s dress. She would have gone to sit with her on the bed, but in light of that fact, she kept her distance and let Minnie stretch across the bed with a blanket over her.
“I’m sorry that the detective said those things in front of everyone,” Constance began. “Suppose you tell me what really happened.”
Minnie slid around on the bed and looked at her from behind a tousled head of hair. “It’s a lie.”
“What part of it?”
“All of it.” She rolled over to face the wall and ran her hand idly along it.
Constance had to remind herself that the girl was only sixteen and probably didn’t grasp the extent of her troubles. It was also true that Minnie didn’t seem to be at her sharpest: she looked to have had a wild time the night before and was probably suffering a nasty headache. Still, the girl had to say something if she wanted to help herself.
“The police seem to think the two of you were posing as man and wife. Is that right?”
No answer.
“I expect they’ll prepare a charge of illegal cohabitation.”
Minnie’s hand paused in its route along the wall, but she said nothing.
It was the other charge that worried Constance the most. “I don’t know if they can prove that you’ve had other men in this place, but?—”
Minnie sat up suddenly. “I haven’t! You’ll tell them that, won’t you? Can’t I go to the toilet? I feel rotten.”
“Go ahead,” Constance said, and Minnie shuffled across the room with Constance’s blanket still wrapped around her, and into the little hall bathroom. Constance stood guard outside.
Minnie put her head right into the sink and ran water over it. The cold water wasn’t as restorative as she’d hoped it would be, but the sound of the water splashing around gave her the cover she needed. She reached under her dress and pulled out the little fabric-covered parcel she’d managed to extract from under the mattress while Constance questioned her. It was a risk to leave anything in the bathroom, but she seemed to be on her way to jail, and she’d have nowhere to hide it there.
The ceiling was made of thin shiplap planks that had worked loose in the dampness. She pushed at one and it gave way slightly, yielding just enough room to slip her bundle between the boards. Before she did, she opened it and fingered its contents: A hat-pin with a real pearl on the end, a fragile gold chain with the tiniest possible chip of diamond suspended from it, a silver bracelet, and a comb that she believed to be made of real ivory. There was also a ring holding what she thought might be a ruby or a garnet.
It didn’t amount to much. But she’d been clinging to those trinkets against the day when she might need to sell them quickly and get away. Apparently that day had come, only she didn’t get away fast enough.
The lady deputy knocked at the door. Minnie pushed her bundle up between the boards and took a pin out of her hair to draw them closed again. She ran a towel over her head, took a hasty drink of water from the basin, and called, “I’m ready.”
12
MINNIE TOOK OFFENSE at the jail’s de-lousing regimen and laughed at the flannel house dress and battered old buttoned shoes she was expected to wear upstairs.
“Next you’re going to come after my dainties,” she said, lightly, as if the whole situation were a farce. She looked down at her corset, which sat limply on the floor of the shower room. It was stained yellow with sweat, and the lining had worn away, leaving naked a section of boning.
“I’ll pack it away for you,” Constance said, and rolled it into a bundle with Minnie’s dress.
“Do you mean that I’m to go bare?”
“It’s only women on the fifth floor,” Constance assured her. “The sheriff hasn’t been able to persuade the Freeholders to pay for corsets, but I did manage to put in a supply of sanitary aprons when it’s your time?—”
“I’ll be gone before then.” Just the idea of rubberized jailhouse sanitary goods made Minnie shudder.
Constance settled her into the cell recently vacated by Edna Heustis and offered to bring her lunch.
“I couldn’t look at food,” Minnie said.
“You’ll feel better if you try,” Constance said. “What about coffee?”
Minnie sat gingerly on the edge of her bunk and looked with distaste at the bare toilet next to her. “Is there such a thing as toast?” she asked, resignedly.
“I’ll find out.”
Downstairs, Constance passed Sheriff Heath in the corridor. He’d already been out on another call, and his coat was splattered in mud and straw.