Mrs. Prost returned to the lawn and said, “Boys, stand aside, please.” Her features were composed, displaying the proper amount of Protestant morality heralding a speech on self-improvement. The boys scooted to the veranda, far from the building wrath in their mother’s eyes.
“Miss Brown,” she began in cool tones, “I don’t venture to guess what may or may not have happened beneath the roof of my home, but I had assumed that a warning against male visitors of any sort was unnecessary, given your pedigree and station. Consider yourself released from my employment.”
My response was cut off by the appearance of Dr. Prost. He moved deliberately down the steps and frowned at me. “Miss Brown. I’m very disappointed. Were you going to flee the scene? Did you not trust that we would seek justice for you?” He shook his head. “Whatever that man’s sins may have been, yours are black indeed. And on the Lord’s day. No.” He placed a hot, thick hand on my shoulder as we all turned to see three automobiles coming around the corner. “Face the consequences for your own soul’s sake.”
The police parked and walked up to us, taking in the house, our faces, Dr. Prost’s hand on my shoulder.
“Dr. Prost,” the first man said with a lift of his hat, “I’m Captain Dunkin. You say there’s a body inside?”
“Yes.” Dr. Prost released me. “Miss Brown alerted us to it as we arrived from church. Upstairs, last door at the top.”
Captain Dunkin regarded me for a moment, then motioned his men into the house. The twins watched but didn’t dare follow while their mother was near. A last officer remained next to us and took out a notepad.
“Lieutenant Doyle. Tell me what you know, Dr. Prost,” he said. “I have to open a report.”
“Nothing.” Dr. Prost hung the cane in the crook of his arm and lifted his hat to run a hand over a deeply receding hairline. “We arrived just now to find Miss Brown running from the home. We called for you immediately.”
The lieutenant squinted at me. “You’re Miss Brown?”
“Yes.” It was nice to finally get a word in edge-wise. “And I didn’t do anything. I came home and found him up there and ran out again.”
“Anybody else home?” he asked.
“The staff all have Sunday mornings off,” Mrs. Prost said. “Most of the time, they spend it elsewhere.” She sniffed and turned her face away.
“Doors locked? Windows?”
“This is a respectable neighborhood,” Dr. Prost said, chagrined. “And no one closes windows in the heat of summer.”
“He must’ve come in through the window,” I said, staring at the roof. Then I caught myself and blushed.
“He did, huh?” the officer asked.
I wasn’t about to explain the habit I had of leaving a small slip of paper in the doorjamb. The twins had played enough pranks that I’d made a way of knowing whether someone had entered my room in my absence. Dr. Prost would likely be offended that I didn’t trust his family to respect my privacy.
But I didn’t.
“It’s easy,” Henry chimed in. Everyone looked over at him. “We climb up to the rooftop all the time using the drain pipes.” He glanced from his mother to the lieutenant, weighing the disapproval of one against the possibility of impressing the other. “You can see the whole harbor from up there.”
Obviously, I should have nailed my window shut.
Policemen were leaving the house, and the lieutenant made eye contact with Captain Dunkin. “This one comes with us,” he said, jerking his thumb at me. The captain looked like a thunderclap and marched directly to the auto.
Dr. Prost scowled. “Miss Brown is the daughter of one of my most admired colleagues, the lately departed Dr. Brown. You must treat her with the respect you’d give any of my household, officer.”
“What’s in a name, Dr. Prost?” But the lieutenant loosened his grip on my arm. “We’ll return her before suppertime. Don’t you worry.”
I was hustled into the automobile before I knew it. I thought about gear boxes and brakes and rubber tires and the idea Papa had about making autos electric. Anything, as we swayed around street corners, but the dead man on the floor in my room. I kept one hand on my hat and the other on my stomach that niggled at me in premonitions of worse things to come.
Other than the two policemen exiting the stark building at 37 Pemberton Square, the only thing to suggest it was Boston’s police station, let alone the first in the whole country, was a small brass plaque next to the door. Within five minutes, I was seated in a hard chair in a small room, facing the lieutenant and his captain.
They did not offer me tea.
“From what I understand so far, Miss Brown,” Lieutenant Doyle said, notepad ready, “your bedroom window was open?”
“Yes.” I should have been terrified. Or full of righteous indignation. But my curiosity had the better of me and I looked around us, saying, “I’ve never been inside before. Is there a prison, too?”
“We’ll be asking the questions if you please, miss.” Captain Dunkin raised his chin. “State your name and your doings today.”
“Loveda Josephine Brown, daughter of the late Dr. and Mrs. Brown, and living as governess for the past two years with Dr. and Mrs. Prost, as you saw.”
“Brown?” asked the lieutenant. “As in the Mayflower Browns?”
“Yes. My mother is from New Orleans. French.”
“Age?”
“Twenty-one today.”
The captain peered at me and ran a hand over his huge mustache. “You look fifteen.”
I narrowed my eyes and waited. The indignant expression on my face was something I’d fought against since childhood.
“Tell us what happened,” Lieutenant Doyle prompted.
“I was out all morning.” It occurred to me that I’d never had a man hang on my every word like this. Not since Papa. “I went for a ride on the subway and got out at the Commons, where I met Miss Beatrice Calabria for a picnic.”
The lieutenant’s pencil never stopped moving. “Anyone else?”
“No. We walked back and parted at the Prost’s home. No one was in the house when I went upstairs, I’ll swear to it.”
“This Beatrice go inside?”
“No. I was alone.”
“You ever see the dead man before?”
I shuddered, recalling curly black hair bathed in blood on my rug. “No. I have no idea who he was or why he was in my room.”
He eyed me and shrugged.
“There’s no blood on me,” I said. “Someone else had to have been there and killed him.”
“You had two men in your room?”
“No! I mean, how else could it have happened?” I looked from one man to the other. “If you think I’m capable of killing a full grown man, you’re crazy.”
The men glanced at each other and the captain said, “We don’t.”
“Then why did you whisk me away so fast? What am I doing here?”
Captain Dunkin lowered his voice, but it grew harder. “The murdered man is one of ours. A policeman in plain clothes.”
“Plain clothes?” I murmured.
“We have them everywhere, especially down by the docks. We’ve got the usual pickpockets, unruly sailors, and wandering immigrants to worry about, but there’s a certain person of interest that we’ve been trying to get our hands on for several months. A thief.”
He waited, as though hoping for a reaction. When I remained still, he went on.
“Our man was trailing him and wound up dead in your room. I’ll ask you straight, Miss Brown. Who is this thief? Where is he now? Because we’re charging him with murder.”
“I have no idea.” My words came out in a whisper.
“Your lover?” the lieutenant asked.
“Don’t be ridiculous!”
“Did you hire him?” the captain asked.
“Whatever for?” I was horrified.
“You ran in exclusive circles before your parents died,” the captain said. “Perhaps you need something to buy your way back in?”
“Certainly not!”
The captain gave his lieutenant a grim look. “Something made our man enter the room and struggle with the thief. There were no drag marks. The kill happened where he fell.” He looked at me. “So what, if it isn’t your virtue, is in your room worth killing for, Miss Brown?”
I sat there and gaped like a fish out of water. “Nothing.”
The lieutenant frowned. “Was the thief lying in wait for your return? Or had he found what he wanted and our man thwarted his escape?”
“He cracks safes, Miss Brown.” The captain rubbed a hand over his thigh in frustration. “He steals bonds and political papers and works for those who are already rich. Espionage. Blackmail. Sophisticated. Works alone.”
“I’m sorry,” I stammered. “I have no idea.”
“If there’s something to know,” the captain said, rising, “my men will have found it by now. We take this very seriously, Miss Brown. It’s one of our own. Dr. Prost has vouched for you.” He gestured to the door and I rose. “I suggest you remain very close to him.”
I couldn’t leave fast enough.