She told Gabby of the new horror at the fair. Gabby reacted in sullen silence, a pained look creasing her features.
“You were at the fair with Ransom?”
When Jane had left Ransom the first time to come home, Gabby had been away with a study group. It was then that Jane had changed to Dr. Tewes and returned to the scene of the double homicide in Lake Park.
“Never again will I be sucked into doing anything that goes ’gainst my better judgment.”
Gabby clapped. “That’s wonderful news!”
“I blame these men ’round me! Kohler, Ransom, Fenger, all of ’em.”
“I like the sound of this.”
“I used to blame your grandfather, for not forcing me to look at reality for what it is! Instead, he taught me to spit in its eye. But too often comes its mocking face, making me the fool!”
“Go ahead, let it all out, dear Mother. You’ve taken on so much, and you’ve sacrificed for my—”
“No, I’ve made my own bed . . . nightmare really. ’Tisn’t any of your doing, child.”
“Please, you’re far too harsh on yourself.”
She paced the foyer, wandered the living room to the kitchen again, still fuming. Gabby remained near, recognizing a pivotal moment.
Finally Jane said, “This is it . . . tonight. I make a resolution.”
“What resolution, Mother?”
“I resolve to end this damnable charade and any further involvement with Nathan and Alastair’s feud.” She thought of Kohler’s final words to her: “String ’im along, Jane . . .
sleep with him if it’ll get ’im talking. . . . One confession of overstepping the law, and by God, we ’ave the bastard!”
Kohler acted in the cold certainty of righteousness, weeding out anyone who had anything whatever to do with Hay
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market. And what of Alastair? Ransom brought scrutiny on himself like a man who, at least secretively, wanted to confess to someone, anyone, and if she were in the right place at the right time, during a vulnerable moment, then perhaps it would be to her that he’d confess his sins. She’d be terrified by it, and she was terrified at the idea of standing in a court docket to testify against Alastair.
Gabby’s excited voice snatched Jane from her thoughts.
“Good for you, Mother. I agree, and I support your action, whatever you decide, you know that.” Gabby hugged Jane, still in Tewes’s clothing.
Jane snatched off the mustache and ascot. “Safer to listen to the fairies in my head! The ones that spoke to me as a child.”
“Mother, I’ll help you if you’ll help me.”
“Help you how?”
“Define the problem in its particulars, and to your own satisfaction, but I cannot engage in another round of emotional tug-o-war.”
Mother and daughter stared into one another’s eyes, each seeking answers. Gabrielle nervously laughed.
“Don’t laugh. I believe the problem is surmountable, but I’m concerned you hide nothing from me, and that I do like-wise, that I should never hide anything, even disturbing, from you if you’ve a right to know, and I am afraid that . . . I am guilty of this, my sweet.” “Guilty how? What’re you talking about, Mother?”
“Tewes.”
“My father? But you have told me all about him. How handsome he was, how romantic, how courageously he died for his country in the war.”
“I-I’ve lied.”
“Lied?”
“All save that he was devilishly handsome.”
“But—”
“Let me now tell you the truth about your father, and I do this not to hurt you but to strengthen you. If I’m exposed CITY FOR RANSOM
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here in Chicago as a fraud . . . well, within that exposure all manner of things will come to light.”
“But how would you be exposed? By whom?”
“Promise to be patient. I will tell you all. In the end, we will regain who we are.”
“Then you plan to expose yourself? Before this other party can?”
“Yes.”
“Inspector Ransom finally onto you, isn’t he?”
“No . . . wish it were so. It’s Chief Kohler. Payback, I suppose, for rejecting him.”
“You broke Nathan Kohler’s heart?”
“If he ever had one.” Jane finally sat.
“What you said about my father . . .”
“I started running away from myself a long time ago . . .
when your father left me alone with . . . when I was pregnant with you. Felt like damaged goods. So much hurt and misunderstanding. Not toward you, my child, but toward myself.”
“So you came back to America to stop the pain?”
“No, to confront it, don’t you see? By setting up a practice in New York, but it proved disastrous.”
“So now we’re here, and talk about hiding from your feelings. You’ve become a master at it, Mother, right along with having become Dr. Tewes.”
“Only an expediency . . . to keep us in—”
“In the money, in the level of comfort to which we’ve become accustomed? Come on, Mother, out with it. To hide. To hide in plain sight is what you proposed from the beginning.”
Gabby grabbed her mother up from her chair and held her. The hug was long and heartfelt. “It’s OK, Mother.”
“But it’s not. In New York, I ran into Nathan, there studying some sort of new identification process he wanted in Chicago, this new fingerprinting thing.”
“It is a miracle of discovery this fingerprint business, Mother, and it is all true.”
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one who pushed Kohler to adopt it, he and Dr. Fenger.
Christian’s known of it for years from his travels to the Orient, but officials ignored his counsel.”
Gabby nodded. “Always the way with new ideas. Look at the resistance to the Crapper, the telephone, electricity.”
“I so desperately need to calm myself,” said Jane.
“Tea. I’ll make us some fresh,” suggested Gabby.
“Would you? Tea will help.”
“Yes, yes, of course.” And Gabby was away.
An unpleasant shrill symphony of terror played out in Jane’s head, and she feared. She feared what would happen to Gabby should something happen to her. She consciously willed a respite to the panic attack. Poor Gabby. This is no way to live for either of us. “Jane Francis,” she spoke to herself, “you’ve got to reclaim your true self.” She repeated it until the mantra staved off the attack.
Once the tea had brewed, they went into the parlor where the windows overlooked the boulevard. For some time, they people-watched. They spoke of enjoying the house they’d rented. They spoke of the fair. Gabrielle felt that her mother needed time before broaching a larger, distressing matter.
“When you were just a little girl, I was befriended in New York by another woman very like myself she was . . . her name was Alicia.”
“Alicia . . . what a lovely name.”
“A lovely soul, and like me, she lived so much inside herself, in her inner world, until . . . well, she was murdered.”
“Murdered? No . . .”
“I had hired her in my practice to help keep things in place, to help look after you, to generally take my place when with patients, which, as it happened, was not often, so we spent a lot of time together, and we spoke of ourselves as problematic women.” “Problematic?”
“She drowned in the park, but there was more to it. I pointed CITY FOR RANSOM
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out the bruises on her neck, her legs, her forearms. Whoever did it knocked her down. I found blood on a stone nearby. I tell you this so you know I understand your pain now.”
“Was she . . . garroted?”
“No . . . at the very least all her parts were together when they laid her to rest. But the authorities were not going to be led by some woman—even if I did hold a medical degree.