The Lady Sleuths MEGAPACK TM(6)

                Someone had scrawled 1925 on the clipping, which came from a newspaper I’d never heard of called The Chicago Star. The headline was Accuser Speaks!

                Dressed in an expensive skirt and a shirtwaist blouse with mullion sleeves, Dorthea Lute looks like a woman of impeccable reputation instead of the fallen woman all assume her to be. For our interview, she sat primly on the edge of her chair, feet crossed demurely at the ankles, hands clasped in her lap, head down. She spoke softly, and when she described the circumstances of her accusation, she did not scream or shout or cry, but told the tale with a calm tone that belied its horror.



                I scanned as quickly as I could, trying to get the gist of the piece. Apparently this Dorthea Lute accused one of Chicago’s most prominent citizens of “taking her forcibly and against her will” in the “quiet of his own home.” Friends and family said that she was bruised, and “indeed, witnesses saw her wearing her arm in a sling. She had two black eyes, and a purplish bruise that ran from her temple to her chin.”

                I closed my eyes for a brief moment. This was an account of a rape, and the interview was conducted with the “accuser,” who—of course—had been accused herself of using her body and her “wiles” to “improve her standing in the world.” When that didn’t work, she accused this prominent businessman of “the most vile of crimes.”

                I thumbed through the file and found no more clippings, just more notes. Then I grabbed the next file. It had the same byline, and featured an interview with the family of a young girl who died brutally at the hands of her boyfriend. File after file, interview after interview, all written in that now-dated manner, trying to make each event, each sentence into some kind of crime in and of itself.



                             I replaced those files and grabbed another from the next row. This came from the Des Moines Voice, another paper I had never heard of, and came from 1933. The content of the file was similar to the others, with the shorthand notes, the scrawls, but the byline was different. This one belonged to Ada Cornell. Cornell had the same kind interest in crimes against women.

                Only these files also contained carbons of the original news piece.

                I was intrigued.

                The next shelf down had stories from the 1940s, and many of them came from different communities. The bylines all differed but the files remained the same.

                So I took the last file off the last shelf. It came from nearly twenty years before—1955 to be exact. I had expected it to be a 1972 file, considering there were notes on the desk. So either the files from 1955 onward were missing, or she hadn’t done anything for years and got back into the work.

                I couldn’t believe that she had given up until recently, not with the typewriter graveyard behind me. I looked around the room for another place that held files. Then I walked to the center of the room, put my hands behind my back, and frowned at everything.

                This was a room within a room within a room, so secret that it was in the very center of the house, hidden behind what most people would consider the pantry. Dolly Langham wrote under false names, so she hadn’t wanted anyone to know she was doing this work.

                I frowned, then glanced at the panels. In the old mystery novels, paneling—especially from fifty years ago—hid secret passageways. This room itself was a secret, so I doubted I’d find a passageway. But I might find a hidden compartment.

                I surveyed the area, looking for scuff marks, fingerprints, something that jutted out, but I saw nothing obvious. Then I looked at the paneling itself. It had a pattern along the right and left side, but the wall with the files and the typewriter graveyard was configured differently, as if that entire area was built especially for Langham. Wall panels weren’t mass produced fifty years ago; they were crafted by someone, who—if the inside room had been built in the Depression—wouldn’t have questioned the design.