Must the Maiden Die (14 page)

"I think it might be important."

"Why?" This came from both Cullen and
Bronwen.

"Because I wonder if this girl has always
been mute. Something Clements said last night about her being
cursed...." Glynis saw their dubious stares and felt slightly
foolish. "It's probably not crucial at this point."

"I'm waiting to organize a search party," said
Cullen, "until after I've talked to this Elise Jager you told me
about. I left a message for her at Carr's Hotel earlier this
morning—desk clerk there said she didn't respond to a knock on her
door, so she must not have been up yet. But she should have
received it by now. I assume she wants this Tamar found as much as
we do. If, as she told you, she's looking for a girl she claims is
her daughter."

"The way you phrased that, Cullen, sounded
as if you're doubtful."

"Do you have a question about Mrs. Jager?"
asked Bronwen. "About her being the girl's mother, I mean?"

"Seems strange to me," Cullen answered,
"that she told you, Glynis, she didn't know where to look for the
girl. And she didn't make much of an effort to find me yesterday. I
was available, at least until the....The Descent!"

Bronwen, whose eyes had been fixed on
Cullen's desk clock, tore her gaze away long enough to grin at
him.

"I agree," Glynis said, "I think it's
strange, too, although the woman was very reserved. I regret now
that I didn't try harder to gain her confidence. But at the time,"
Glynis added with a glance at her niece, "I was too concerned with
Bronwen's whereabouts."

Bronwen murmured, "Sorry," but didn't look
overly so.

"It does occur to me," Glynis said, "that
we've jumped to a conclusion here. Because the surname Jager is the
same, we're assuming the missing servant girl is the one Mrs. Jager
is searching for. But the name isn't particularly unusual."

"How many people in this town," Cullen asked
with skepticism, "do you know named
Jager?"

"None," Glynis said, "but it's a German name
and we have a sizable German population here. Just because I don't
know any—"

She left off at a firm knock on the office
door. Bronwen, at a nod from Cullen, rose to answer it, but the
door opened from without, and the flaxen-haired Elise Jager stepped
into the office. Glynis, with less concern now as compared to the
day before, thought how striking the woman looked. Perhaps it was
in part due to her height, because her nose and jaw were too
prominent, her blue eyes too small, to call her beautiful, or even
pretty. But she definitely was not commonplace.

"Are you Constable Stuart?" she said to
Cullen. Her face betrayed little anxiety, Glynis noted. Could the
woman have failed to hear the uproar in town? Perhaps, if she knew
no one and had not seen a newspaper.

When Cullen nodded and stood up, she said
brusquely, "I'm Elise Jager. I understand you wish to see me."

Glynis rose to reintroduce herself. Bronwen
also stood, abandoning her watch on the clock to give Mrs. Jager
what Glynis thought was exceptional scrutiny. She wondered again
why her niece was so curious about this woman.

"Thank you for coming, Mrs. Jager," said
Cullen. "If you'll have a chair, I need to ask you some questions.
I understand from Miss Tryon that you're here in Seneca Falls to
look for your daughter?"

"Yes." Elise Jager went to the straight
chair and lowered herself into it, her movements uncommonly
graceful, something else about her that Glynis had not noticed the
day before.

"And you're from the Syracuse area?'' Cullen
asked.

"Yes."

Glynis had reseated herself, and Bronwen,
who remained standing behind her, muttered under her breath, "She
isn't going to make this simple, is she?"

Glynis, hoping that Elise Jager hadn't
heard, shifted on the chair to direct a dark look at her niece. But
Bronwen's attention was again on the clock. This excessive concern
with the time not only mystified Glynis, but had begun to make her
uneasy as to what Bronwen might be brewing now. At one point
Glynis had speculated that it could have to do with her Treasury
job—which would explain the furtiveness—but had discarded that
notion as stretching imagination too far. Bronwen was here in town
for her cousin's wedding. Treasury could hardly be interested in
that.

Cullen, if surprised by Mrs. Jager's
apparent ignorance of the town's current events, and the shortness
of her responses, did not give indication of it, but looked at the
woman with a level gaze. "What is your daughter's name?"

"Her name? Why, it's Jager, of course. Tamar
Jager."

And that took care of that question, thought
Glynis. She found it more than curious, however, that the daughter
of this elegantly dressed woman worked as a servant. As she
studied the guarded Mrs. Jager, she wondered how she would react
when informed of her daughter's possible connection to murder.

Glynis didn
'
t have long to wait.
Cullen, leaning forward in his desk chair, at once proceeded to
tell Mrs. Jager that her daughter had disappeared at or about the
time her employer, one wealthy and well-respected Roland Brant, had
been stabbed. Then, while the woman simply stared at him
blank-faced, he sat back in his desk chair. And waited, as did they
all.

Glynis began to think Elise Jager had not
fully understood Cullen, because her reaction seemed so empty of
emotion. But her hands in black kid gloves gave her away; they were
tightly clasped in her lap, the soft leather stretching like a
second skin over her fingers.

Bronwen, with a last quick glance at the
clock, moved toward the door, saying, "I have to leave now. I hope
you find your daughter, Mrs. Jager."

She opened the door but then she slowly turned back
and said to the woman, in an offhand manner that Glynis knew was
contrived, "Oh, by the way, is Tamar's father here in Seneca Falls?
He would, I assume, be Mr. Jager?"

Elise Jager was obviously not prepared for
the question, as her mask of indifference dropped, her face bearing
a confused array of expressions before it settled into one of
dislike. Glynis could hardly blame her.

Bronwen, though, did not wait for an answer.
Before the silence that followed could be broken, she was out the
door.

"Excuse me," Glynis said, and quickly got up
to follow her niece.

"Just what was
that
about?" she
demanded, catching Bronwen as she started for Fall Street.

Bronwen fidgeted, rocking on her feet as if
preparing to run. "I'm going to be late—"

"Late for what?"

"I can't stay any longer! But that woman
should be made to answer my question, Aunt Glyn, because
something's wrong back there," she said, tossing her head in the
direction of Cullen's office. Then she sidled away from Glynis,
saying, "I'm sorry, but I have to go. And don't
worry
about
me!"

Then, picking up the skirt of the green
dress, she turned and darted off like a dragonfly.

Glynis stood watching her once again with a
mixture of exasperation and concern. Bronwen was up to no good,
she told herself as she walked back around the firehouse. And what
exactly could she do about it? Again, as usual, nothing. She did
ponder, briefly, the possibility that her sister Gwen, instead of
birthing Bronwen, had found her one day under a toadstool.

When she went back inside the office,
murmuring an apology for her abrupt departure, Cullen eyed her with
curiosity. Mrs. Jager simply eyed her. As if Glynis, like her
niece, should be viewed with extreme caution.

"Mrs. Jager has just told me," Cullen said
to Glynis, "that her daughter was not employed by the Brant
family."

Glynis must have looked as confused as she
felt, because he explained, "It seems that Tamar was indentured to
them."

"Indentured?" Glynis echoed. For a fleeting
second she wished Bronwen was there to blurt:
Why?

"Can you tell me when she was first
indentured?" Cullen asked the woman, which to Glynis's mind began a
tortuous, roundabout route to get where he wanted to go, although
he must have earlier determined that this would be the best way,
perhaps the only way, of reaching this woman.

"Several years ago," answered Elise
Jager.

When nothing more was forthcoming, Cullen
said, "Would you please be more specific? We need as much
information about your daughter as possible."

"I don't understand what difference it could
make," she said, drawing herself up on the chair. "Frankly,
Constable Stuart, I find these questions from you and your
acquaintances extremely intrusive. My only purpose in being here
is to find my daughter."

Glynis saw the instant that Cullen's mind,
and hence his tactic, changed. His eyes narrowed and he sat forward
to say in a clipped voice, "I'll also be frank, Mrs. Jager. Your
response to my inquiries is unsatisfactory. Let me make things
plain for you. Miss Tryon has been of invaluable assistance to me
in the past. Plus, I thought you might be more comfortable with
another woman present. And while her niece Miss Llyr may not always
proceed in the most tactful fashion, she is employed as a United
States Treasury agent. Which means she is trained to be, as you put
it, 'intrusive.'"

Elise Jager's face had begun to blanch. And
Glynis, for the life of her, couldn't see what bearing Bronwen's
occupation had on any of this.

"Now whether or not you find my questions
intrusive
,
Mrs Jager, is of no concern to me," Cullen
continued, "because your daughter has become, for the time being,
a principal suspect in a murder investigation.

Elise Jager's hands unclasped and she gripped the
seat of her chair. "That's absurd!" she gasped.

"All right," said Cullen, sitting back,
"then suppose you tell me why it's absurd."

"Tamar wouldn't harm anyone! Ever!"

The woman's voice carried passion and
conviction, and perhaps, Glynis thought, her wall of reserve had
been breached.

"Go on," Cullen said.

"Why would you think she's committed some
terrible crime? She's just a child!"

"A child?" Cullen asked. "How old is
she?"

"She'll be seventeen next month."

Cullen's brows lifted slightly at this, but
Glynis understood: to many a mother almost any age would still
make her daughter "just a child." And now that Elise Jager's facade
of indifference had cracked, Glynis had the sense—the same one
she'd had when first meeting the woman the day before—that she
seemed somehow familiar. But Glynis wouldn't interrupt to ask, now
that Cullen had finally gotten through.

"You told me your daughter had been
indentured several years ago," Cullen said. "What exactly is
'several'?"

"Two. Two years."

"So she was fourteen, fifteen at the
time?"

Elise Jager nodded. Glynis, seated in a
chair beside her, looked at the woman's strong features and saw
eyes made softer by unshed tears.

"How did that come about—that your daughter
was indentured?" Cullen asked her, his tone considerably milder,
as if he, too, had seen the tears.

She hesitated, as though making a decision,
just as she had done with Glynis the day before, and then
explained, "That was not done by me, Constable Stuart. I had no
choice. My husband, Tamar's father, made the arrangements. He and I
are...we've been separated for some time now."

Glynis quickly got to her feet and went to
the office window, her anger so strong she feared she could not
restrain it. There was silence in the room behind her as she stared
out at the canal, seeing wave upon wave of petitions asking,
pleading, begging that the law be changed; the law that gave a
father sole custody of a married couple's children—
absolute
custody—
allowing him to sell those children into servitude
despite the heartbroken objections of a mother. The law that gave a
father the right to take a child from its mother in all cases of
divorce, no matter how reprehensible the behavior of the man, or
how venial the purpose. A father could be a drunkard, an adulterer,
a profligate spender, a wanton degenerate, and still retain
custody of his children.

For two years Susan Anthony had canvassed
the state in pursuit of legal reform. To gather signatures on the
petitions, she'd delivered lectures all over the state, covering
hundreds of miles between cities and towns by stagecoach and train,
by sleigh and canal boat, through summer heat and winter blizzards.
And it was mostly through her efforts that the New York legislature
had finally the previous year granted to women some rights to their
purses and to their children. A married woman now shared with her
husband equal custody. And this reform had been brought about by
the tireless campaigning of the unmarried Anthony. And by the
articles and written speeches of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who,
although tied down with seven children in Seneca Falls, still
managed to wield a powerful pen.

Glynis heard Cullen shuffling papers on his
desk. She took a deep breath before turning back to the room to
say, "Are you aware, Mrs. Jager, that New York State
re
cently passed a new law called the Earnings Act? It also
addresses the custody of children."

"Yes, I just learned of it," the woman
answered eagerly. "That's why I've come here. The indenture period
was supposed to be for five years, but I want Tamar released from
it now. Can you tell me, Constable Stuart, how I would go about
asking for custody of her?"

"Go to the Seneca County Court House in Waterloo,
and talk to the clerk there. He should be able to tell you how to
file an application petitioning the court for your daughter's
custody. The circuit judge isn't there now, but I'm told he'll be
back in a day or two. He could probably hear your request
then."