Grace was one of the first to testify as part of the new grand jury proceedings. After her testimony, Osborne declared that it was “one of the most interesting and remarkable stories I ever heard.” The jurors then went to see the motorcycle store. They walked around in silence, especially in the cellar.
Grace knew that if Cocchi were to return, he would die in the electric chair. That was against all of her beliefs, but she still said that “every effort must be directed toward bringing him back to this country.” She knew that the benefits would be too great. “One case of this sort,” Grace said, “fully proved will expose much and root out a big gang in this city. I suppose I’ll get my head punched for saying that, but I believe that Cocchi knows more about these cases of young girls than any man in this city.”
Cocchi kept issuing a flat denial of any collusion with the police. “Not only was there no connivance between myself and the police,” said Cocchi, “but it was dread of the police which caused the crime.”
Grace disagreed. “Cocchi didn’t escape just to save himself,” she said. “I believe it was suggested to him to get away.”
Only parts of Grace’s grand jury investigation made it to the papers. The final, tell-all testimony of Grace Humiston that had been so eagerly awaited in the Wallstein hearings had been distilled to only a few vague lines. The full story of how Grace had solved the case of the missing skater had not yet been told. So, after some persuasion, Grace agreed to do something that, unlike the other endeavors in her life, she was almost completely unsure of.
An interview.
16
Mrs. Sherlock Holmes
On the tenth floor of the building at Madison Avenue and Forty-second Street, Grace nervously arranged the roses on her desk. The half circle of reporters around her desk seemed to inch forward. Grace’s black eyes fell against her dress of purple silk. She had decided to soften her dark wardrobe as of late, if only in the form of a lacy white shirt.
Before she answered even five questions, the telephone rang. “Yes, this is Grace—that you, mother? Tut, tut, I am not overworking myself. No, really, I’m not. Oh, mother, do you mind tucking away my gray dress; it’s on the chair nearest the dresser, and will you see that the plants are watered?” Grace hung up and smiled to the reporters when the phone rang again.
“Oh, no,” she said, to some perceived congratulations. “Don’t talk about me, my dear, but little Ruth.” As Grace chatted away, the reporters in the room took notes as they studied her for clues. One noted that Grace had a merry laugh. Another wrote that she reminded him of the late Joe Petrosino. “William J. Burns looks like a detective,” wrote a reporter, “but Mrs. Grace Humiston does not at all look like an investigator. You may see her type presiding over civic or mothers club meetings.” Another wrote that it was like dropping in at Baker Street and having Holmes throw the pipe, the violin, and the hypodermic out of the window and begin to discuss how many strawberries make a shortcake.
Some of the reporters had done a little digging into the woman in black before their visit. Her family had roots in old New York. Her father was Adoniram Judson Winterton, an influential member of the Baptist Church. Grace grew up in the city and graduated from Hunter College in 1888. She taught for a time at the Collegiate School at West End Avenue and Seventy-seventh Street. After her first marriage to Henry F. Quackenbos, a doctor, ended, she took an evening class at the NYU law school. Five years ago, she married again, this time to a former co-worker of hers at the Legal Aid Society. He was a Yale lawyer named Howard Humiston; they were married in Peru and lived togather with his mother. Rumor said that on their steamship honeymoon to London, the boat came down with typhoid fever. Grace saved the day by single-handedly instituting strict quarantine procedures, thus getting them safely back to England. The story surprised no one.
There was talk that Grace first studied law only to understand the management of the large property of her family. Grace said that upon the death of her brother some years earlier, she became trustee of the family estate. But her becoming a lawyer was about more than that. One month after her firm was opened, there were 120 cases on her docket. She had the respect of lawyers and judges. She was called the “People’s friend.” She was a protector of the poor who also loved the Ladies’ Mile, the Midtown shopping paradise that included Bergdorf Goodman, Best & Co., and Tiffany, all anchored on the street by the Flatiron Building.
Once Grace got off the phone, the reporters readied their pencils for her actual words. Almost on cue, she spied Kron lurking in the outer office. She motioned him in. She was determined not to go down alone.
“Kron is a remarkable man,” Grace said. “A splendid investigator. When I was investigating the peonage cases, I had to do some work among the Hungarians. So I went to a Hungarian newspaper and asked for a capable man who could talk Hungarian. I got Kron. He had not been working long on the peonage cases when he was offered a bribe of $500. He came right to me and told me about it. We set a trap for the would-be bribers and marked money was paid in the old Astor House. We caught them and sent them away. I knew I could depend on Kron.”
Grace had succeeded in embarrassing her old friend. Reporters then asked Kron about the working habits of his employer on the Cruger case. “How many hours did Mrs. Humiston work?” someone asked.
Kron shrugged. “Sometimes eighteen and twenty-one hours. She ate her meals in the office here. She is absolutely tireless.”
Grace shook her head. “I may have done that occasionally, but as a rule I put in only fifteen or sixteen.”
“How did you solve the Ruth Cruger case?” another reporter asked, cutting right to the question they were here for.
“Because,” she said.
The room became quiet again.
“I started out with the conviction that Ruth Cruger was a good girl,” Grace continued, her head nodding. “I knew that one of her training and character never would figure in an elopement or anything of that kind. Working on this conviction of mine, I knew that the police theory of ‘waywardness’ was all bosh and that Mr. Cruger’s repeatedly expressed belief that his daughter was being forcibly detained was correct—or at least partially so.”
As the reporters took her words down, they observed details about her. Her eyes were puffy, for one. She wore no earrings but had a thick white locket around her neck. She wore a large blue stone on her left ring finger. Her desk was very messy.