“What?” he said. He said it quiet, but all it did was make Antonia wish she’d never ever set foot outside the storage room on the second floor above the music store.
“He, he died over by Long Bridge. That’s where they found him. The police, that is. He was beaten pretty badly. It was hard to tell it was him.”
“Who are you?” He boomed.
Did he think she was lying to him, making it all up?
“It’s true!” she burst out. She reached for the doorknob behind her back, grasped it.
He started walking toward her. “And why would Mrs. Stannert send someone like you, a mere child, to tell me this?”
Now she was really in for it.
He reached for her, as if to grab her shoulder.
She twisted the door open, tumbled out into the hallway, and ran faster than she thought she could, heading for the nearest iron staircase. Use that staircase only in case of emergency, if there is a fire—that was Mrs. S’s voice reminding her. And well, this wasn’t a fire, but it sure was an emergency.
Antonia yanked the iron door open and pounded down the flight of stairs, the iron ringing as loud as any of the church bells in her ears. On reaching the sixth floor she burst out into the hallway, hurtled past startled guests, and, flying on memory and instinct, zigzagged through a maze of hallways and corridors to one of the servants’ staircases. In this manner, she made her way down floor after floor, moving between wings and various staircases. Between the third and second floor, she finally slowed down, gasping, and used her sleeve to wipe her nose, which was full of snot from the stupid cold, leaving a wet streak on the blue plaid fabric.
Hand on the door to the second floor, she pushed it open slowly. Nothing unusual. No horde of bellmen or cops waiting to nab her and haul her back up to the seventh floor to face Gallagher for questioning.
She slid out into the hallway. Keeping her pace sedate, she headed for an obscure staircase, far away from the lobby and the grand courtyard, which led out to a side street.
It was only then Antonia realized that Gallagher hadn’t chased her or shouted at her to come back or stop. He hadn’t even, it seemed, alerted the desk to have her hunted down and hauled back to him for further questioning.
So what was he doing?
The probable answer only made her knees—already shaking from all the stairs and the running—feel like they were going to give way entirely.
He’s gone to see Mrs. S.
She’s gonna murder me.
Chapter Seventeen
Inez listened with half a mind as Patrick May, son of laundress Molly May, hunched over the upright piano in the lesson room, doing a very credible job on Clementi’s Sonatina in C, Opus 36, Number 3. Patrick’s kinky red hair, pomaded into submission when he first sat down to the lesson, was now in disarray. He focused on his hands, his face with its café-au-lait skin sprinkled with freckles and acne, twisted in concentration.
When he was done, Inez said, “Very nice, Patrick. Your fingering for the scale passages is good, and in general you are handling the different tempos well. Watch the small ornamental note in the fourteenth measure. Begin slowly and gradually increase the tempo.”
He nodded, green eyes as focused on her now as they had been on his hands earlier.
“And watch your posture. Sit straight, near the edge of the stool. Keep your forearms parallel to the floor. Pay attention to your shoulders. When they are raised up around your ears, it causes unnecessary stress. Playing well requires a balance between focus, a certain amount of tension, and free, flexible movement. Again, please.”
He straightened his back, shook out his hands and rolled his shoulders, then placed his fingertips on the keys and closed his eyes. Inez recognized the pose. She often did the same thing herself, gathering her wits and awareness before launching into a piece. In the quiet pause, she reflected briefly on the Mays. Patrick’s mother, Molly, and his aunt, Bessie, were two of her business clients. The Mays were the hardest working, most determined women she knew, which is why she had advanced them a sizeable loan to rebuild their small laundry recently ravaged by fire.
Always on time with their payments, they were building a loyal clientele, slowly, over time. Bessie took care of the heavy laundry work, channeling her ire at the unfairness of the world and their lot into the vigorous washing, bleaching, wringing, and drying. Molly was in charge of the more precise tasks of ironing and sewing. A skilled seamstress, she could repair a silk stocking such that you never saw the run, a man’s fine shirt such that you never detected the tear. Impressed, Inez sent her and Antonia’s things to the Mays for cleaning, knowing that they would come back looking as if they were new bought.
When Bessie first came to Inez’s office looking for a loan on behalf of the sisters, she had spilled out far more of their convoluted family history than Inez had cared or desired to know, invoking God’s name only when she railed against him and her sister.
“That Molly, my sister, she brought disgrace upon our family. If you don’t know that already, well, you will soon enough, so I’ll tell you now. Disowned by mother, father, uncles, aunts, everyone. I stood by her. The only one. I’m her sister, and I told them, they could throw me out too. I’d not see my sister and her baby starving in the streets. God will see them all in Hell for their lack of charity. Molly having a bastard child, well, that’s bad enough, but when the child’s of tainted blood, they couldn’t spare a Christian thought on them.”
She had wheeled around pointing a finger
