If I had committed murder, I thought, would I not be sure to clean up meticulously after myself? Would I have invited a stranger to see the very room with the blood evidence in it? Mr. Emory appeared to be a meticulous sort of man. Would he stuff a bloody handkerchief behind a dresser? Wouldn’t he have wiped the basin clean? So either it was an unknown stranger who had somehow disposed of Mrs. Emory, or…I paused in mid-thought again as something more preposterous struck me: it was just possible that Mrs. Emory had staged the whole thing.
Five
I toyed with this idea and the more I thought about it, the more plausible it became. Perhaps Mrs. Emory knew her husband pretty much left the bedroom to be her boudoir, shaving and washing himself in the outdoor bathroom. He was not likely to check on the state of the bedroom washbasin.
But did all that blood really come from a cut while peeling potatoes? Enough to soak a handkerchief? Then another thought struck me. The butcher’s boy. It would be interesting to see what he had delivered and who had placed the order. And the laundry cart. I created a new scenario for myself. Mrs. Emory, clearly unhappy and dissatisfied with her life, makes the decision to run away. But she doesn’t just want to make a clean break. She wants her husband to be punished for the way he has treated her.
So what made her decide to run away now, leaving her warm coat and most of her clothes behind? And where could she have gone, now that her family home was no more and her stepmother hadn’t wanted her around in the first place? Then I found my thoughts drifting to the handsome young mulatto man I had seen on Patchin Place. When I first met Mrs. Emory, she had spoken of a hopeless romance, a romance that could never be. Was it possible that her former lover had come into her life again, and persuaded her to run away with him? Now that I thought about it, I realized that her own striking dark features might also indicate what was insultingly called “a touch of the tar brush.” Was that why her stepmother couldn’t wait to get rid of her and had tricked her into marrying Emory?
But the big question remained. How had she escaped two days ago? In that laundry basket, perhaps? But the laundry man had clearly been middle-aged and fair skinned. So how was he part of the plot, and why should she need to be smuggled out of her house when her husband already believed she was going to visit friends that day? Then I realized that I knew the answer to that too. Old Mrs. Konigsberg going out again at dusk, without her dog. Did she ever go out without her dog?
I couldn’t wait to find out. I re-buttoned my blouse, found my shawl and let myself out of the front door before Mother Sullivan could try to prevent me. Mrs. Konigsberg opened her door warily in response to my tap. “Ja?” she said.
“Good morning, Mrs. Konigsberg,” I said.
“Gut morning,” she replied, nodding as she recognized me.
We had hardly spoken more than a few words and I hoped her English was good enough to understand me. “I hope you can help me,” I said. “Two days ago you went out in the early evening. Without your dog?”
“In the evening?” she said, frowning as she concentrated. “I go wizzout my dog? No. I go out eleven o’clock, every day and my Fritzi comes with me. Every day.”
“But two days ago you went out again. About six o’clock?”
She shook her head vehemently. “No, this is not true. I do not like to walk in the dark. It is too dangerous. At six o’clock I prepare my dinner and Fritzi’s dinner.”
“So it wasn’t you I saw on the street?”
“No,” she said. “It was not me.”
I thanked and left her looking puzzled, wondering, I’m sure, what on earth my reason had been for my question. But at least I had one small piece of evidence now. If Mrs. Konigsberg had not walked down Patchin Place in the early evening, then it had to have been someone disguised as her. And I remembered Mrs. Emory telling me how she had loved charades and amateur dramatics. I had spotted a box of makeup in a drawer of her vanity, and I realized now that the long, old-fashioned cape that the false Mrs. Konigsberg had worn was of dark gray serge.
***
I couldn’t wait to tell Daniel. I knew I wasn’t yet feeling strong enough to walk all the way to police headquarters or to fight my way onto a trolley. So I went home and wrote a note.
Daniel, I think we may have been deceived. I have uncovered some more evidence on the disappearance of Mrs. Emory. Can you have one of your men find out who placed the order with the butcher, and who summoned the laundry? And could someone check the Emory’s garbage can?
Then I sent Aggie down to the police station at the Jefferson Market with instructions that the letter should be delivered to Daniel as soon as possible. Aggie shot me a worried look.