Mrs. Roosevelt's Confidante (18 page)

“Murdered?” Maggie's heart skipped a beat. “Why does he think that?”

“First, he didn't believe suicide was characteristic of her,” Tom replied. “No history of depression, no previous attempts. And she was newly engaged.”

“Who is—was—Blanche's fiancé?”

“Byrd Prentiss, an aide to the Governor of Virginia. He's Governor King's D.C. liaison.”

“And he thinks she was murdered.” Maggie took that in. They watched as water gushed from a verdigris gutter, while pigeons taking refuge from the storm cooed in the eaves. A plump woman's umbrella turned inside out in the wind and she tried her best to protect her Christmas hat. A young man dashed by, a newspaper held over his head. And another man in a fedora sat in a parked black sedan across the street.
Why, hello, old friend.

She turned her attention back to Tom. “Have you spoken to the police?” she asked. “Have they gotten the results of the autopsy?”

Tom looked down at her and tilted his head. “Why do you ask?”

“Blanche died right before I came to the White House. And so I've been filling in for her, with the First Lady. Mrs. Roosevelt was…quite upset to learn of Blanche's death.” She was careful not to say more. Certainly nothing about a missing letter.

“What was she working on?” Tom asked.

Maggie stalled. “Working on?”

“For Mrs. Roosevelt.”

“Well, Mrs. Roosevelt has an extremely busy schedule, of course. Her ‘My Day' column, press conferences, various charities…” Maggie took a deep breath—it wasn't news that Mrs. Roosevelt was involved with causes. “Mrs. Roosevelt's also working with Miss Andrea Martin to try to stop the Wendell Cotton execution.”

“Bingo!” Tom exclaimed. “If Mrs. Roosevelt has the President's ear, which we all know she does, she could get him to speak to Governor King…”

“What's Governor King's relationship with the Roosevelts?”

Tom pulled his scarf tighter around his neck. “I don't know for sure, but King's a Southerner. Traditionally, men like that aren't too supportive of folks like the Roosevelts, even though they're Democrats. There's also talk that King wants the party's presidential nomination when FDR's term's up—”

“But,” Maggie interrupted, “to the best of my knowledge, the President has no plans to intervene in Cotton's execution. King has nothing on him or Mrs. Roosevelt. So why would anyone want a secretary dead?” Well, when she was Mr. Churchill's secretary in London during the Blitz…but that was another story.

“That's the part I can't figure out,” Tom said. “But the thing is, Byrd Prentiss showed me a letter—”

Maggie blinked. “A—a letter?”
Don't tip your hand, Hope.

“Yes, a letter,” Tom said. “He told me that the day before she'd died, Blanche had given him a sealed letter, to be opened ‘just in case.' Well, when she was found dead, he opened it, of course.”

“Of course,” Maggie managed.
Another
letter? She felt ill.

“Yes,” Tom said. He seemed to be having an internal struggle. Then he reached into his breast pocket and took out the letter Prentiss had given him. He handed it to Maggie.

She skimmed it, then went back to read it again, looking for every detail.

This letter was the same handwriting as the letter she had discovered through her pencil-lead technique. And some of the phrases were the same. But it was
not
the same letter. The other note incriminating Mrs. Roosevelt was still at large. “Is this the original?” she asked.

“Yes.”

Maggie was struggling to put the pieces together.
What if Blanche
didn't
do something she was supposed to? For example, she could have been sent to Mrs. Roosevelt's office to undermine her somehow, accuse her of sexual misconduct, discredit her. But maybe she couldn't do it. Or
wouldn't
do it. And then when she refused to go through with the plan, she was killed
. Maggie felt a cold touch to her spine and looked up at Tom. She thought of her last case, of a murdered ballerina in Edinburgh. “If Byrd Prentiss was her fiancé, I'd check to see if he has an alibi for the night in question.”

“But”—Tom was momentarily speechless—“he's the one who came to me!”

“The murderer is generally someone close to the victim, Tom. I'm not saying he
is,
but you can't rule him out just because he was engaged to her.”

“You'd make a damn fine reporter, Maggie Hope.” Tom chuckled. “Er, sorry. Didn't mean to swear in front of a lady.”

“Oh, believe me, I've heard worse. From you at rehearsals, if I remember correctly.” She turned up the collar of her coat. “I'm thinking we should go to Blanche's apartment and look around, see if the police missed anything. And speak to Detective Timothy Farrell, in charge of the case. I met him at Mrs. Roosevelt's office, so he might actually talk to us. And I'd also like to see the coroner's report.”

Tom's jaw dropped a bit. “Most girls I know would want to go to Christmas parties, you realize…”

“Tom,” Maggie said patiently, “I'm not ‘most girls.' So, on to Blanche's apartment—it's not too far from here.” She marched down the stairs, leaving Tom to catch up.

“Wait.” He looked shocked. “How do you know that?”

“Let's just say—how do they put it in your line of work? Ah, yes—I can't reveal my sources.”

The streets were deserted, with people at home or in church. They dashed through the cold rain under Tom's umbrella to Blanche's apartment on Massachusetts Avenue, Maggie leading him through the side doors. She opened the lock, once again, with her hairpin.

“So, that's what they teach you at Wellesley College, huh?”

“Yes, lock picking—along with Shakespeare, French, and tennis,” she muttered as the pin finally pressed against the catch.

Inside Blanche's apartment, Maggie retraced her steps. Of course, the police had been there. But they hadn't known about the letter. And she might have missed something the first time she was there. Back then she'd thought she was looking at a suicide.
But if it's murder…

She and Tom looked through the apartment, going through bathroom cabinets, kitchen cupboards. Nothing. Then Maggie went through Blanche's small secretary desk. Nothing. She pulled out all of the drawers. In the bottom drawer, there was a box of stationery. Maggie opened it. Underneath Blanche's notepaper was an invitation addressed to her in engraved print:
We Celebrate the Newest Members of the
Women of the Ku Klux Klan.
There was an address for a private home in Alexandria, Virginia, and then a photograph tucked inside—a group of young white women, smiling, in white dresses, carrying bouquets of roses. It looked like a graduation photo, except for the sharply pointed conical white hats they all wore.

“Look,” Maggie said, handing Tom the invitation and photograph. “Blanche may have been part of the Klan.”

“I didn't know there were women Klansmen, er, Klanswomen. Now, that's a disturbing thought.”

“So, Blanche would definitely be supportive of Wendell Cotton's execution,” Maggie mused, remembering Blanche's Kant quote as she put everything back in the desk the way she'd found it. “That's all there is,” she said, rising and putting on her coat.

They went to the front door. “Wait,” Maggie said. There was the door's lock, the one she had picked, but there was also a chain lock that could be fastened from inside the apartment. It was broken. “Look.”

They both stared at the broken chain.

“But it could have been broken when she moved in,” Tom pointed out.

Maggie shook her head. “This is a respectable building. They'd have replaced it before she moved in. What if someone
broke
in?”

“No way to tell for sure.”

“Righty-o. Well, then, let's see if the police have any theories they might want to share.”

At the Washington, D.C., police headquarters, even on Christmas Day, security was tight.

“Because of the attack on Pearl Harbor?” Maggie asked, looking at the lineup of officers with guns standing around the perimeter of the lobby.

“That,” Tom said, folding his wet umbrella, “and also because of the demonstrations.”

“Demonstrations?” Maggie repeated. “What demonstrations?”

“You've been out of the country for a few years,” he said as they made their way to the receptionist's desk, leaving wet footprints on the stone floor. “So let me catch you up—security tightened in September, when there were some big marches and a rally here in D.C.”

“Really?” Maggie asked. There had been few U.S. papers available in western Scotland, where she'd spent the autumn. “Why?”

“Police brutality against coloreds. The coloreds marched on the police this past summer because A. Philip Randolph, the founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, wanted to challenge African Americans not being included in the armed forces and the nation's defense industry. Lots of folks demonstrated—and this was well before Pearl Harbor and war. Things got ugly.”

“My God, I can imagine.” At the front desk, Maggie said, “We'd like to speak with Detective Farrell, please.”

The receptionist was a woman in her thirties, with henna-colored hair, a low-cut blouse, and a bad overbite. Some of the cherry lipstick she'd applied had migrated to her teeth. “Do you have an appointment?” she asked.

“My name is Miss Hope, and I work with Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt.” Maggie pulled out a card from her handbag. “Detective Farrell gave me this,” she said, “when we met at the White House, and told me to come and speak to him if I learned anything regarding a particular case.”

The receptionist's eyes widened. “I'll let him know you're here, Miss Hope. Right away, Miss Hope.”

“Thank you for seeing us, Detective, and on Christmas Day, too,” Maggie said as Farrell ushered them into a conference room to speak in private. He reeked of sandalwood cologne.

“Emergency-room doctors and cops don't get holidays off.”

“This is Thomas O'Brian, from the
Buffalo Evening News,
” Maggie said by way of introduction.

“Anything for the First Lady,” Farrell said, his oily hair gleaming under the fluorescent lights. “Now what can I do for you?”

“We'd like to see the case file on Blanche Balfour.”

Detective Farrell's cheerfully expectant face fell. “I'm afraid that's not possible, Miss Hope. Those are private files.”

“We have reason to believe that Miss Balfour was murdered,” Maggie said.

“I'd be happy to review any evidence you may have.”

Maggie smiled. “That's the thing—there are certain things we need to be discreet about, as you might assume, given who's involved.”

Detective Farrell's cheeks began to redden. “I can't just hand over a file to a civilian—and a journalist—”

Maggie looked at him through narrowed eyes. “Give us Blanche Balfour's file and I won't tell your wife about the affair.”

The detective gasped. “How did you know?”

“You have a band of light-colored skin on the ring finger of your left hand,” Maggie said, “where a wedding ring would be, while the rest of your hand is tanned. I noticed in Mrs. Roosevelt's office when we met that you slip your wedding ring on and off. And now you don't have it on, during a workday. Which makes me suspect that you're seeing someone during your lunch hour. And removing your ring while you do.” She smiled sweetly. “You also just applied a prodigious amount of cologne.”

Tom gave a low whistle.

“I'll—I'll get you Blanche Balfour's file,” Detective Farrell said.

“Thank you, Detective. I certainly appreciate it,” said Maggie.

“How did you learn to do that?” Tom asked as they left, making their way through the heavy raindrops back to the street.

Maggie had Blanche Balfour's file tucked tightly under her arm. “Do what?”

“Shake down that detective.”

“Oh, that,” Maggie said, looking to see if she could spot Mr. Fedora. “Just working on my Nora Charles impression is all.”

“Right.” Tom didn't sound convinced.

“Do you think this weather will ever let up?” Maggie said, changing the subject.

Tom took the hint. “With all this rain, you must feel like you never left England.”

“We need to go somewhere dry to read this,” she said, impatient, “but nothing's open on Christmas Day except churches.”

“Churches, yes—and also Chinese restaurants,” Tom said, raising his hand for a taxi. “Do you like dumplings?”

He took Maggie to lunch in Chinatown, Tao's on H Street NW, between Sixth and Seventh Streets.

It was warm inside Tao's and smelled deliciously of ginger and garlic. An article from
Life
magazine was pinned up on the wall, next to the flags of the United States and China:
“How to Tell Japs from the Chinese—Angry Citizens Victimize Allies with Emotional Outbursts at Allies.”

As Tom hung up their coats, Maggie read,
“LIFE provides a handy guide to distinguish friendly Chinese from enemy alien Japs.”

“Mr. Tom!” came a silvery voice from the back of the restaurant. Maggie looked up to see a petite and angular woman, her long gray hair fastened into a chignon and held with cloisonné hair combs decorated with kingfishers. On the collar of her dress was a small enamel pin with both the American and Chinese flags.

“Mrs. Tao!”

“Table for
two
today, Mr. Tom?” she asked Tom, fixing a questioning gaze on Maggie.

Tom gave her his most dazzling smile. “Table for two, yes.” As Mrs. Tao grabbed menus and led them to one of the tiny tables, he added, “May I say, you're looking exceptionally gorgeous today, Mrs. Tao?”