The Russian Hill Murders Read Online Free Page A

must run in the family.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “It means you’re not the only Woolson cursed with an overactive imagination. First you, then your brother Samuel, and now Charles. You just said the woman suffered from angina. Why look for mystery where none exists?”
    “Unless you’ve suddenly become an expert on heart disease,” I said acerbically, “I suggest you keep your opinions to yourself.”
    With that I stood and left his cubicle. As I crossed the clerks’ antechamber, a nervous-looking woman with three small children in tow entered the office. She wore a worn but neatly pressed day dress and a straw hat decorated with faded ribbons. Her hair was light brown, and several errant strands flew about her wan face. The two youngest children clung to her skirts, while the oldest child, a girl of about six, held tightly to her mother’s hand. From the bulge beneath the woman’s dress, it appeared another child was on the way.
    Hubert Perkins, the head clerk, gave the woman and her brood a disapproving look. “Do you have an appointment, madam?” he asked, not bothering to stand.
    “I would—” the woman’s eyes darted around the room. “That is, I’d like to speak to—”
    She faltered, the clerk’s surliness adding to her discomfort. I empathized with the poor soul. Hubert Perkins had treated me much the same the first day I’d entered these rooms. I knew all too well what it felt like to be judged and summarily dismissed as being of no consequence.
    I was about to walk over and rescue the poor woman when she looked up and saw me. Color flooded her pale face and her expression turned guardedly hopeful.

    “Are you Miss Woolson?” she asked.
    I was taken aback. To the best of my knowledge, I’d never met the woman. “I’m Sarah Woolson,” I said with a smile. “Is there something I can do for you?”
    “Rebecca Carpenter’s my friend,” she said. “You helped her get some money—when she was hit by a carriage?”
    Ah, yes, Mrs. Carpenter. It was the first brief I’d drawn up for my new employer. “I remember the case very well, Mrs … . ?”
    “Mankin, miss, Lily Mankin.” She twisted the strap on her reticule. “My husband, Jack, was killed two weeks ago—in a fire at the contract shop where he worked.” She hesitated, and tears filled her eyes. “Three people got out. My Jack and four other poor souls didn’t. Only one door was open. The back door—” She swallowed with difficulty. “The back door was nailed shut.”
    “Nailed shut!” I exclaimed. Most sweatshops were little more than tinderboxes; they were always going up in flames, sometimes taking out whole blocks of similar buildings with them. When faced with such a common danger, why would anyone block off one of only two means of escape?
    Deciding the clerks’ chamber was not the place to discuss the matter, I suggested we go to my office. The woman gathered her children and followed me along the corridor to my office. There, I settled the widow in a chair and indicated another chair for the children. The two eldest, the six-year-old girl and her younger brother, obediently shared the seat, while I took the last chair behind my desk.
    “Please,” I asked. “Tell me what happened.”
    “Thieves broke the back door during a robbery,” she told me, settling the youngest child on her lap. “Instead of fixin’ the door, they nailed it shut.”
    Incensed at such callous disregard for the safety of one’s
employees, I realized this sort of thing happened far too often in a world where the poor and disadvantaged were considered dispensable. When one sweatshop worker died, dozens more were waiting to take his place.
    “What is it you’d like me to do for you, Mrs. Mankin?”
    “I was hopin’ you could help me, like you did Mrs. Carpenter. I take in laundry and mendin’, but it’s not enough to pay my bills.” She rubbed a hand over her extended belly. “Soon I won’t even be able to do