Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 09 by Damned in Paradise (v5.0) Page B

continued, “when Mr. Darrow said he’d known you since you were a lad.”
    I wasn’t sure I’d ever been a “lad,” and I just kind of gave her a glazed smile. One thing about working with Clarence Darrow: the surprises just kept coming.
    “Tommie is resting,” she said, gesturing to a closed door. “Should I wake him?”
    “I don’t think that will be necessary,” Darrow said, “just yet.”
    “Please sit down,” she said. “Would you gentlemen like some coffee, or perhaps tea?”
    We settled on coffee, and she went to the door and called out, “Oh, steward!”
    A mess hall sailor approached her and she asked him to fetch four cups of coffee with sugar and cream. He responded with a nod, and she shut the door. We all half-stood as she took her place at the round table.
    “Now, Mrs. Fortescue,” Darrow began, getting his shipwreck of a self settled in his chair, “my associate, young Mr. Heller here, is going to take some notes. He’s not a stenographer, mind you—just some informal jotting down of this and that, to back up this feeble old memory. No objection?”
    She beamed at me, fluttering her lashes. “That would be just fine.”
    I wondered how much her friend Mrs. Walsh had told her about me.
    “And just how are you bearing up, Mrs. Fortescue?” Darrow asked gently.
    “Now that the worst is over,” she said, “I feel more at ease than I have in months. My mind is at peace. I’m satisfied.”
    “Satisfied?” Leisure asked.
    “Satisfied,” she said stiffly, sitting the same way, “that in our efforts to obtain a confession from that brute, we weren’t breaking the law, but attempting to aid it. I’ve slept better since the day of the murder than I have for a long time.”
    A frown had tightened Darrow’s face on the word “murder,” but now he affected a benign, almost saintly smile as he patted her hand. “We’ll not be using that word ‘murder,’ Mrs. Fortescue. Not amongst ourselves, and certainly not to anyone with the press.”
    “You must have read that interview in the New York Times,” she said, putting a hand to her chest, her expression mildly distressed. “I’m afraid I was indiscreet.”
    His smile was lenient, but his eyes firm. “You were. I don’t mean that unkindly…but you were. No more talk of ‘murder.’ Or of your only regret being that you ‘bungled the job.’”
    “That did look…clumsy in print, didn’t it?” she asked, but it was an admission, not a question.
    “Are you really sleeping better now?” I asked her. “Pardon me for saying so, ma’am, but I would think the stress of this situation would have to take its toll.”
    She raised her chin, nobly. “It’s much better with everything all out in the open. They suppressed my daughter’s name, in the first case, but that only made it worse. Rumors ran rampant. People would stare at her poor bruised cheek, and whisper and wonder.” Her face tightened, pinched; suddenly she looked sixty. “Lying gossip, filthy stories—a campaign calculated to drive my child out of Honolulu, or short of that, defame her character, and prejudice jurors if she dared to prosecute a second time. Not long before the…what shall I call the murder, Mr. Darrow?”
    This time his smile was a twitch. “Let’s use the word ‘incident,’ shall we?”
    She nodded. “Not long before the…incident…a few days, I think…I went to Judge Steadman—he’d been very kind to us, during the trial. I told him I feared for my daughter’s life. Not only were those five rapists running wild and free, this escaped criminal Lyman was reported to be in Moana Valley.”
    “Who?” Darrow asked.
    “Daniel Lyman,” Leisure said. “A murderer and rapist who walked out of Oahu Prison with a burglar pal of his on a New Year’s Eve pass. They’ve since ravished two more women, one of them white, and committed numerous robberies. The partner was captured but Lyman’s still at large. It’s been a major embarrassment