a bastard child in that young body.
That news would never appear in any daily paper.
Chief of Police Stone, according to Sam Ryan who mentioned it to Matthias Boon, had told Herr Professor Smuddie about the-in Sam’s word-“problem.”
It added a new and fascinating wrinkle to the mystery of her death, and I thought of Jake Smuddie, dazed and disoriented these days, a wanderer in the small city.
Poor Frana, scared, running, desperate to leave Appleton, still clinging to her dream of Broadway though she carried a child in her body. Who could she turn to for solace? Kathe? Hardly. The lover who betrayed her, touched her…The jilted Jake? Somebody else? Worse, her hideous brothers slouching around that decrepit farmhouse? Little Frana, beautiful and…running scared. My heart ached for her. She didn’t know how to get away.
By the end of the day the story had more spice. Byron Beveridge, lolling at his desk with his feet up, said in his drawling, Southern sleepy voice to Matthias Boon-just as I was walking back into the room-something salacious about Jake Smuddie and Lovers Lane.
“So what’s new with the Frana investigation?” I asked the men.
Silence.
“I gather…”
Matthias Boon interrupted me. “Miss Ferber, isn’t your workday over?”
For a second anger rose in me, the taste of ashes in my mouth. But then a curious thing happened. I didn’t care. It didn’t matter anymore. None of this. Ever since Boon began his campaign against me, I’d bristled and fumed, ready to do battle. Now, sensing another mean-spirited confrontation, I knew to my marrow that the landscape had shifted. Perhaps Frana’s murder had something to do with it. Perhaps Houdini’s rousing praise was part of it. This city room was too small to contain me now. Yes, there was no escaping the resentment I felt at my unfair treatment at the
I made a dismissive sound, which bothered the men not at all, gathered my belongings, glanced around at one more pitiful rung of hell…one of the unimportant ones.
That evening, skipping supper and dressed in my take-me-very-seriously outfit of brown chiffon taffeta shirtwaist with a tan linen flounce skirt, I walked to the Lawrence University campus. To gather my resolve, I first strolled among the tree-shrouded buildings of the Methodist university, a place I’d always liked because of its somber appearance and its earnest students. I headed to Eldorado Street, an expanse of elegant white-fenced professorial homes with electric lights and vanilla-soda lives. There stood the imposing home of Herr Professor Solomon Smuddie, his wife Odette, and son Jacob, called Jake, erstwhile Ryan High football hero, now disaffected Lawrence University freshman.
A housemaid dressed in gingham and a French Chantilly cap answered the door and said in German, “
Odette Smuddie walked in, smiling, but nervous; her hands kept grazing her face as though she wanted to stop herself from saying something. She extended her hand.
I apologized for the intrusion and identified myself. “I’m a close friend of Jake-Jacob-and I had to be on campus, and he’d said to say hello if I’m in the neighborhood and…”
Odette Smuddie actually made a yelping sound. “I’m afraid Jacob is not here right now, Miss Ferber…”
“Oh, I’m so sorry.” I stood.
Mrs. Smuddie went on, “No, please stay a bit. For tea. Please. He never has guests, and I’m worried about him…” She stopped. “Please, have tea.”
In the parlor, settled into an overstuffed armchair, I gazed at the shelves of cut-glass vases, the table with the cushy vellum photograph album, the fireplace with the veined marble mantel, the wrought-brass and copper chandelier, the dark mahogany paneling, and the ceiling with the elaborate plaster rosettes. The housemaid served me a cup of tepid tea and a piece of apricot torte. Not bad, I thought. It needed a little more cinnamon and orange rind, but…
“I’m worried about Jake, too.” I swallowed.
I got no further. Herr Professor rumbled in, a bull of a man, thick-chested and bursting out of a Prince Albert coat as crisp and pristine as Switzerland. On his expanding vest I spotted the obligatory watch fob and a pin that identified him as part of some German Unity lodge. The man had more gold plate on him than a self-aggrandizing Prussian general.
“And you might be?” he demanded, not warmly.
Odette jumped up, flustered, banged her elbow against the back of the chair, and fell back down, slumping like a rag doll.
“I’m Edna Ferber.” I rose and half-bowed. I made my excuses for intruding, but Herr Professor regarded me with forbidding gray-black eyes, the color of an approaching storm. I looked away because the man frightened me. Around Appleton the epithet most commonly used with him was:
I almost faltered. “I’m a friend of your son, and I wanted to say hello. I know it’s unseemly but…”
“But young women do not pay visits to young men,” he grunted.
“I came…”
“You are a reporter. I know you. You’re the one who thinks we Methodists are prone to vice.” I blushed. In my account of President Plantz’s afternoon tea, I’d mentioned that cards were played, a throwaway line added to my innocuous account. Card playing was forbidden on campus. Apologies were proffered (Sam Ryan wasn’t happy with me), but obviously Herr Professor remembered my indiscretion. I needed to stop imaginative jottings in my notebook.
“I am his friend. That’s why I’m here.”
“He has no friends.” He scratched his bushy moustache. “He’s always been a soft, yielding boy. I thought football and whippings would turn him into a man, but Jacob would rather gaze at the moon than tackle the world out there.” He actually pointed through the window at the twilight sky. As though ordered-Herr Professor, Odette and I-turned to see the complex, unmanageable world outside, ignored by the absent Jake Smuddie who was probably sitting out there now, most likely in that gazebo.
“Jake is a smart young man.”
Herr Professor was ready to end the conversation. “He’s lost.”
“Lost?”
“To us.” He pointed to his wife.
Dressed in a too-elegant dress to be an at-home gown-a red serge evening dress with strands of black piping (I made a mental note to discuss it with Fannie)-Odette was obviously one of the ornate possessions on show in the cluttered drawing room, a figurine among the porcelain bric-a-brac, the morning glory phonograph, the heavy tiger oak table, the brocade chairs, the feathered pillows. Was she a household pet that would jump at the slightest noise and bolt meowing from the room to hide behind the woodpile at the hearth? I thought of Frana’s sad mother, Gertrud Lempke, herself the invisible member of the family. Two women from different worlds, but so alike.
“I know Jake’s been through a great deal of…” I paused. “The murder of Frana.” There, out there: blunt, purposeful, smack up against his hermetically sealed academic tower.
Herr Professor thundered. “Jacob is not here.”
“Miss Ferber.” His wife stopped as her husband glowered at her.
I was not through. “It’s important that he not be connected with her death…”
Herr Professor, cold, cold. “I do not blame my son, though perhaps you assume I do. A weak boy, coddled by a silly woman. An only child, hiding in the corners of this house. There are such women in the world as this Frana, a wayward…”
He searched for a word, and I interrupted. “She was a young girl.”
A raised voice, thick and coarse. “She was a seducer-a sinner, Jezebel, temptress. I constantly pulled him away from her hold. He told me that she’d found a man to make her happy, an older man, hardly a surprise. But
