“You don’t have to help me study,” Edna said.
“Deputy Kopp said that I was to follow your example,” Minnie said. “Besides, I ought to keep busy. I ought to do whatever you’re doing.” She’d been avoiding the other girls in the house. She saw herself in them, and saw how easy it would be to run around with them, and fall into their ways. She hadn’t entirely abandoned the idea of running off to New York—she’d only postponed it, one night at a time—but she didn’t want to risk being sent back to the reformatory over a silly dalliance with a man in Pompton Lakes.
She would study her French verbs, instead, thank you. And—here was another surprising truth—she would study Edna. Edna was becoming a source of fascination for her. She had the most astonishing ideas about the world, and her place in it. Here was a girl who could see ten miles down the road and ten years ahead, and who knew exactly the way forward, and was prepared to go, unwaveringly, through the hell of war if that’s where her convictions led her. Minnie had never met anyone like her.
She tried not to think about the fact that Edna would be leaving, or to wonder what would become of her after Edna was gone. When Edna and the society girls talked about their upcoming departure at the meetings, Minnie turned her head away and pretended not to hear.
57
TWO POSTCARDS ARRIVED from Fleurette in a single day. The first showed a stately theater in Philadelphia. On the reverse she’d written:
What a grand city!—and they adore May Ward here. They adore me too, as I had the biggest laugh of the night last night. We’ve been held over for two more shows, which means we won’t get the break we were promised. It’s no matter, as Mrs. Ironsides drags us around to museums and spoils our liberty.
F.
The second came from a hotel in Baltimore.
One of the girls twisted her ankle, another burned her neck quite badly with a hair-iron, and Mrs. Ward is convinced that we’re cursed. Tell Norma the parks here are full of pigeons who can’t be bothered to do as they’re told. She ought to come down and take charge of them.
F.
Constance didn’t know what to make of Fleurette’s claims of success on the stage. Was it really necessary for the girl to lie to them so deliberately? At least she continued to write, and gave no indication that she knew that she’d been spied upon. Norma, astonishingly, had lived up to her end of the bargain and not said another word about Freeman Bernstein, or about their ill-advised trip to Harrisburg. Some measure of domestic tranquility had settled over the Kopp household. When Constance was at home, she and Norma lived together peaceably, or at least in a spirit of resignation, having given up trying to change the other’s ways.
Things had calmed down at the jail, too, with Minnie Davis packed off to share a room with the ever-trustworthy Edna Heustis. Constance was more than a little pleased with herself for having put those two together. She’d already forgotten that Minnie had suggested it, and had begun to think of it as a program of her own invention, which might prove useful for the Democratic candidate for sheriff—whoever that might be, as he had not yet been named—in the campaign against John Courter.
She was, in other words, enjoying a rare moment of tranquility, both at home and at the jail. That was not to last. On a Monday evening in the middle of March, Constance walked into Sheriff Heath’s office and found herself face-to-face with a ranting, gesticulating, furious Freeman Bernstein.
He was pacing around the room, still in his coat and hat, gloves in one hand, ranting about a misappropriation of taxpayers’ money, abuse of power, and something called a writ of melius inquirendum, a term unfamiliar to the sheriff, judging from the way he raised his eyebrows in despair upon hearing it.
When he saw Constance in the doorway, Sheriff Heath said, “Mr. Bernstein, I believe you’ve met Deputy Kopp. I know she’s eager to hear your complaint and to see it settled, but I wouldn’t want you to have to repeat yourself after you’ve just given so thorough an account, so perhaps I will?—”
“Nonsense, Sheriff!” Mr. Bernstein interjected. “She’ll hear every word of it. Or perhaps she can tell it all to me, as she’s the cause of it—she and that disputative sister of hers.”
It occurred to Constance briefly to defend Norma, but then she decided that she agreed with him on that point. Instead she took a place by the window.
“May I first say,” Constance told him, “that whatever has happened, it wasn’t sheriff’s business. You and I have met but once, and I wasn’t on duty and hadn’t come in any official capacity. I don’t like to see the sheriff’s time taken up with a personal matter.”
“Nonsense!” Freeman Bernstein shouted. He threw his gloves down but picked them up straight away, most likely so that he would be able to throw them down again. “Kopp is always a cop, no matter where she goes and what she does. Isn’t that right, Sheriff?”
Sheriff Heath nodded glumly and tried again to put in a word. “What we expect from our deputies, whether on duty or off?—”
Once again, Mr. Bernstein wouldn’t let him finish. “Yes, yes, just as I said. And your lady deputy thought it best to use her powers to conduct an unwarranted investigation of my wife, and to follow her personally into Pennsylvania, and to employ a veritable army of matrons in every city on Mrs. Ward’s theatrical tour, who trailed my wife and her company from hotel to theater to restaurant and back again and managed to scare the wits out of her at every turn. Do you know how high-strung these actresses can be, Sheriff? Do you?”
Sheriff Heath made to answer, but Mr. Bernstein went on without pause. “And don’t go lecturing me again about evidence and testimonia ponderanda and that nonsense. My wife described Miss Kopp perfectly, which was not difficult, as all she had to say was that a very large woman was squeezed into a very small telephone booth and was regarding her suspiciously from under the brim of an unfashionable hat. Anyone who has ever seen Miss Kopp would recognize her from that description.”
Constance resisted the urge to defend her hat and instead said, “Mrs. Ward is a famous actress. It’s natural that people would want to watch her and to follow her from place to place. There’s no law against it.”
“That’s enough of your legal gibberish!” Mr. Bernstein bellowed. “My wife is under the misapprehension that I am the one having her followed. She’s so angry about it that she’s fired me as a manager, and refuses to come home at the end of her tour. She says she’s going to take a flat in Manhattan and hire new representation. I want something done about it immediately.”