Escape Artist

“You killed beauty.” My verdict was plain.

Gustave sneered, his hatred palpable. “There is no way you can ever understand, Miss Ferber. Not a chance in hell.”

Chapter Twenty

I sat on the front porch with my father. The end of June had been balmy, with warm, serene days and cool drifting nights; but the first days of July were unbearably hot, more like August dog days, the air static and dry, the leaves wilting. The late afternoon sun was shrill and orange in the sky. For a while neither of us spoke. It had been over three weeks since that awful day at the Lyceum. What immediately followed had left me frustrated and angry. Gustave Timm had been arrested, of course, but it took both Chief Stone and Deputy Moss an hour to grapple with Mildred Dunne. She’d vacillated between periods of shrieking hysteria and chilly stupor. Carted off indecorously in the police wagon, her parents summoned, she was seen by the family doctor, declared to be in a state of nervous collapse, and, within days, quietly delivered to the Women’s Asylum in Dubuque, Iowa, where, Chief Stone confided to me, the doctors predicted she’d spend the rest of her life.

Meanwhile, Gustave Timm was charged with murder, confessing to plotting and carrying out Frana’s death. His brother Homer resigned his position, and the splashy front-page accounts in the Crescent and the Post-and in the Milwaukee papers-recounted Gustave’s admission. What was missing was any mention of Mildred Dunne’s real role-those grasping hands choking the hapless Frana-but, instead, a brief note that Gustave’s intended bride, Mildred Dunne, school librarian, had suffered a complete breakdown and was now under a physician’s care out of state.

I bristled at the lie. Chief Stone didn’t sympathize with me, though he admitted, “Fact is, sounds to me like Gustave told her about it and she went into action.”

But a genteel lady of the town could not be prosecuted. It just wasn’t done.

I whispered back, “If I’d been caught with a gun in my hand, I’d certainly be taken away.”

He’d laughed. “And there’d be a crowd of angry citizens ready to lynch you, too.”

Within the week, the Lyceum closed its doors, canceling a revival of Ten Nights in a Barroom, as Cyrus P. Powell announced the building was for sale. Privately he’d told Chief Stone that he’d been planning on removing Gustave Timm from his post.

“A man I didn’t trust,” he’d reportedly said.

The day after the arrest, at the Crescent office, I listened as Sam Ryan and Matthias Boon concocted the front-page story. Not only was the truth squelched, but there was no mention of my role in solving the crime. I, who cracked the mystery. Somehow, filtered through Matthias Boon’s autocratic lens, diligent police work had solved the case.

Sam, still shaken, suggested that it was unsuitable for a young girl like me to be so prominent a part of such a sordid story, girl reporter or not. Murder, seduction, abandonment. I fumed. He seemed sheepish and hesitant. Civil War veteran, this man; old-fashioned, man of his time, a Midwestern gentleman-all that prehistoric claptrap that insisted that only men had province on the front pages of a newspaper, especially in a murder investigation.

“Mr. Ryan, you know the truth…”

“I’m doing it for you, Miss Ferber.”

I’d gotten testy. “I can take care of myself.”

Matthias Boon, sitting nearby, smoking his pipe, had a complacent look on his broad face. “Would you ruin your chance for marriage, Miss Ferber?”

“Marriage has nothing to do with it.”

“We were thinking of you.”

“I doubt that.”

Matthias Boon was nonplused. “Our readership would frown on such reportage.”

“I doubt that.”

Sam tried to be kind. “Miss Ferber, Appleton is not ready for the New Woman.”

“But you hired me.”

“To do society reporting, to describe luncheons, to record property transfers, not to be at the center of a sordid murder.”

“The Crescent mentioned earlier that I helped find the body.”

The men looked at each other. “That was a mistake. We had comments on that.” A heartbeat of silence. “Letters, in fact. The Women’s Temperance League thought it indecorous. To mention an unmarried woman in such a story.”

Matthias Boon clicked his tongue. “You’re just lucky you weren’t the next victim.”

“Then my name would have been on the front page of the paper.”

“That would have been a difficult piece for me to write.”

I sucked in my cheeks. “You’d have found the words.”

I sat patiently as Boon read his copy aloud. Then I erupted. “And you accuse me of being a fiction writer, Mr. Boon.”

Sam glared at me. “You have to understand the way things are in Appleton, Miss Ferber.”

“I understand duplicity.”

“Enough.” Sam turned away.

“I’m sorry,” I continued, “it’s not enough. I got Mildred Dunne to confess to the actual murder.”

Sam paused, chose his words carefully. “She was hysterical, Miss Ferber. You heard her. It was a lot of babble. You can’t seriously…”

“This is wrong. An injustice. Yes, Gustave was in on the murder but she…”

“Stop!” he yelled.

Matthias Boon, a sliver of a smile on his face. “Yes, stop, Miss Ferber.”

Both men turned to the fiction they were assembling, ignoring me. They began to squabble over some wording, Boon insisting on heightening the melodrama. Sam wanted to commend Homer’s role-the brother doing the right thing-but Boon pooh-poohed that idea, informing Sam that he knew how to write copy. The anger grew, and Boon stormed away. Sam stared at his retreating back and I knew at that moment how much Sam disliked the strutting rooster. But it gave me little satisfaction now.

“I can’t work here any longer,” I said into the silence.

“What did you say?” Sam turned to me.

“I can’t stay in a place that celebrates a lie.”

Sam’s face turned red. “Miss Ferber, please.”

I started to gather my belongings.

Sam watched me closely, mumbling that perhaps I needed a vacation-take two or three weeks, think about it, rest, go shopping in Milwaukee-but I drew on my gloves, adjusted my hat, and for the last time began climbing those dreaded five steps to street level.

I looked back into the city room. “No.”

Three weeks became ancient history, the sensationalism and the surprise giving way to shrugged shoulders, shaking heads, and the passage of days. Weeds grew around the gravestone of Frana and her unborn baby. Mildred’s mother was heard telling a customer at Pettibone’s that she’d never approved of Gustave, that she thought him a shady man who simply wanted into a rich family. Everyone had a similar story to tell. Nobody, it seemed, had trusted him. After all, he was from out of state. Back East. Heads nodded. But by then everyone was getting ready for the Fourth of July parade, patriotic bunting already being hung on College Avenue, a grandstand being erected by the fountain, and boys stockpiling fireworks. Folks congratulated Chief Stone for saving the Fourth of July. Life, they said, was getting back to normal.

I no longer knew what that meant. Too much had happened. I sat with my father in the early heat, sweat on my brow. He looked drained.