Hush Now, Don't You Cry(96)

He looked alarmed. “Are you suggesting that Hermann followed the alderman out to Newport and then killed him?”

“I’m just examining all possibilities, rounding up as much evidence as possible for my husband,” I said. “Tell me, did you have much to do with Mr. Terrence Hannan, and with the alderman’s great-nephew Sam?”

“Very little,” Brady said. “Mr. Terrence stopped by at the office occasionally, but the other young man—I believe he was employed down at company headquarters. Since Mr. Hannan has been involved in politics he has left most of the day-to-day running of the company to Mr. Joseph Hannan.”

“And Terrence?”

“I understood he was being groomed to take over some day,” Mr. Brady said. “Although I don’t think the alderman felt he was altogether satisfactory. He was too much of a dilettante.”

While he had been speaking my attention was drawn to the door behind his desk, the door that must lead to an inner sanctum.

“Would you mind if I took a look at Alderman Hannan’s office?” I said. “I presume that is his office behind you?”

“It is, but I can’t see any reason…” He moved so that he was guarding the doorway.

“Can you think of any reason why not?” I demanded, my patience now wearing thin. “It’s not as if the alderman is going to come back, is it? I only want to help and if he scribbled a note to himself, something that’s now residing in the wastebasket…”

“Mrs. Sullivan, I have the baskets emptied twice a day,” he said primly. “His desk is always kept immaculate. So is his filing system. Alderman Hannan likes everything just so—” he corrected himself, “I mean he liked everything…” And his voice faltered. “I still can’t believe that he’s gone,” he ended quietly.

“All the more reason to find his killer,” I said. “Would you rest quietly knowing that you could have helped but instead let his killer walk away a free man?”

“But I don’t see how…” He was clearly upset now. “I mean his office is quite pristine. No paper in wastebaskets…”

“Then you’d have no objection to my looking,” I said. I pushed past him to the door and opened it. It was, unfortunately exactly as he had described and I had no idea what I had hoped to find there. Men do not rise through Tammany Hall to the rank of alderman and leave around incriminating slips of paper that might name their killer. I stood looking at the polished mahogany desk with its matching Italian red-leather blotter, inkwell, and penholder; the file cabinets; the portrait of the alderman at his investiture; another portrait of him shaking hands with President Roosevelt. I wandered around the room, feeling Donald Brady’s breath down the back of my neck. Would there be anything to be gained by searching through all those drawers of files? Surely Donald Brady did the filing and he’d know what was in them.

I noticed that a thin film of dust had already accumulated on the polished surface of the desk. Then my eye was drawn to the leather-bound blotter.

“How often do you change the blotter?” I asked, trying to make out the words that had been blotted onto it.

“As soon as it is full,” he replied. “The alderman was never one for waste.”

I leaned over the desk and tried to make out the words. It was as I had suspected—the secretary wrote the letters and Mr. Hannan merely signed them. On the maroon sheet I could discern the alderman’s signature several times, but not much else. There were some scribbled figures, but I had no way of knowing what they were. And on one side of the maroon blotting paper a small list of words. I took my notepad from my purse and tried to make sense of them, as of course they were scribbled backward in the Alderman’s bold hand.

Berlin

Salem

Granville

Cambridge

Brandon

I read out the words to Brady. “Do these mean anything to you? Was the alderman maybe planning a trip to Europe? Or maybe something to do with Massachusetts? There are a Cambridge and a Salem near Boston, are there not?”

He shook his head blankly. “I have never heard him mention any of those places to me. If indeed they are places. Isn’t there a new songwriter called Berlin? Brandon and Granville sound more like names.”

I nodded. “They do indeed.” I paused. I had heard one of these words recently, but in what context I couldn’t remember. A name someone had mentioned in connection with the Newport cottages? Maybe the owner of one of the neighboring homes? I frowned then shook my head. “But they mean nothing to you? Not a list of people the alderman had to meet, or deal with in some way?”