Robin Paige - Death in Hyde Park

The door opened again, and the old woman, now revealed to be short and leather-faced, her hunched shoulders draped with an old black lace shawl, beckoned Kate in. Taking the umbrella and poking it into an umbrella stand, she closed the door and locked it. Then, still saying nothing, she padded silently down a dusky hall, lit only by a flickering gas jet. The air was stale and stuffy, as if the place had not been aired in a decade, and a distinct odor of boiled cabbage seemed to arise like a malodorous fog out of some nether region.

Kate followed through the shadows, her curiosity mounting by the minute. She remembered that Mrs. Conway had published the Clarion until five years ago, when she fell ill and her daughter had taken it over-out of a sense of duty, Miss Conway had said. Kate frowned at that, thinking that Anarchists were not supposed to act out of a sense of duty, since they owed no obligation to anyone but themselves-at least, that’s how they were presented in A Girl Among the Anarchists. There was a puzzle here.

At the back of the house, Kate’s guide took a narrow, uncarpeted stair to the second floor. The odor of cabbage was overtaken by the odor of cigars, and Kate guessed that this floor contained the CLEAN ROOMS let to GENTLEMEN ONLY. They traversed the long hallway again, this time to the front of the house, until they came to a closed door. The old woman knocked three times, slowly, as if the knocks were a signal. At a brusque, “Come in,” she pushed the door open, shoved Kate into the room, and closed the door behind her.

Inside the room, Kate stood stock-still. The rest of the house had been dark and gloomy, the rooms she had glimpsed through open doors uncarpeted and sparsely furnished, with only the most utilitarian furniture. It had been chilly, too, so cold that despite her jacket, Kate had shivered. But this room, this boudoir, was suffocatingly hot and lavishly opulent, the walls hung with embroidered draperies, the floor covered with carpets, the canopied bed draped in billowy white gauze, the windows covered with blinds of the thinnest bamboo and draped with some exotic fabric in an Oriental pattern of pinks and golds. The air was heavy with the musky scent of sandalwood incense, and a canary spilled a melody from a gilded cage beside the window, which was banked with palms and exotic plants. Arranged in front of a fire in an ornate fireplace were two chairs upholstered in the same patterned fabric of pinks and golds, and a mauve-velvet divan. And seated on the divan, looking like some Oriental empress, was the largest woman Kate had ever seen.

“Well, don’t just stand and stare,” the woman snapped. Her voice was low and hoarse. “Come here and let me see you. What’s your name?”

Kate went to stand before the divan. “Kate Sheridan,” she said, trying to conceal her astonished consternation. The woman was grotesquely, preposterously obese, like the Japanese sumo wrestlers whose photographs Kate had seen. Her pale flesh ballooned shapelessly, her arms were like stuffed pillows, and her puffed cheeks squeezed her eyes into narrow slits. But in those eyes there was a sharp, shrewd look, more than a little mad in its focused intensity, that made Kate shiver. The woman’s scanty reddish-brown hair hung in limp, old-fashioned curls around her ears, and she was draped from her chin to her ankles in a sort of Turkish caftan. She wore Moorish sandals on the swollen feet that were propped on a velvet footstool in front of her. She was smoking a cigarette in a long ivory holder, and daintily picking chocolates out of a box with fat fingers, each one of which bore a flashing ring. Kate knew that the woman must be Charlotte Conway’s mother, although whatever physical resemblance there might have been between the two was buried in a mountain of flesh.

“Well?” the woman demanded. “What is it?”

Recovering herself, Kate began, “I’ve come to ask you whether-”

“I know, I know,” Mrs. Conway growled impatiently. She gestured peremptorily to one of the chairs, her several chins waggling with the effort. “Sit down. It hurts my neck to look up at you. Where is she?”

“I have no idea,” Kate said, sitting on the edge of one of the upholstered armchairs. She felt very much like Alice in the presence of the Red Queen, and the room was so hot and stuffy that she could scarcely get her breath. “I hoped that you might suggest-”

“Why should I?” Mrs. Conway asked, drawing on her cigarette and blowing the smoke out of both nostrils like a maniacal dragon. “The girl never tells me a thing. Just comes and goes, back and forth to that silly newspaper.” Her voice became whiny. “The ungrateful child never pays her mother a minute’s attention, doesn’t even do me the courtesy of putting in her head to say good morning, or drop in for tea, or-”

“I understand,” Kate interrupted hastily, feeling that she was in danger of being swamped by the woman’s massive self-pity, “that you published the Clarion before Charlotte took it over.”

“Yes, and I did a far better job of it, too.” Mrs. Conway picked up the newspaper that lay on the divan beside her and waved it in the air with an expression of great disdain. “Just look at this, will you? Such namby-pamby, mealy-mouth porridge as I’ve never seen. When I published this paper, we printed strong stuff, I tell you. We were the voice of the revolution!” As she spoke, her own voice grew louder and more ringing, as if she were addressing a multitude. “We stirred men’s souls, I say. We struck their hearts as if they were gongs. We got them out on the streets with revolution on their lips and dynamite in their hands!”

Kate cleared her throat, feeling uneasy. There was something almost electric in the woman’s voice, something commanding. Perhaps Mrs. Conway had indeed stirred men to revolution, although if she had, things did not seem to have been greatly changed by it. “But you are no longer the editor?” she asked.

“Sadly, my health does not permit it.” With a melancholy sigh, Mrs. Conway put out a fat hand and plucked a chocolate out of the box, popping it, whole, into her mouth. “There are my lodgers to look after, of course-quite a demanding lot they are, too, always needing this and that and the other thing. I can hardly keep up with them. And I am otherwise engaged just now, on an important literary project.” She gestured toward a table pushed against the wall under a gas lamp, piled with stacks of papers. “I am writing the story of my life, which is quite extraordinary, really. I have known a great many fascinating revolutionists-Lenin, Kropotkin, Bakunin, Emma Goldman. My book will be of enormous significance.”

“I am sure,” Kate said in a tactful tone, although she felt that Mrs. Conway suffered from too great a sense of her own importance. “But I am deeply concerned about Charlotte.” She took out a calling card with the Sibley House address on it and handed it to Mrs. Conway. “I would very much appreciate it if you could send a note around to this address if you hear from her. Do you have any idea where she might be just now?”

“None at all,” Mrs. Conway said, carelessly dropping the card on the table. “I told the police as much, too, when they came around, pestering me about her. The girl is an adult, and not my concern. A true Anarchist-I consider myself such, of course-refuses to acknowledge any responsibility to family or comrades. A true Anarchist lives entirely for himself.” She paused, delicately searching with her fat fingers among the chocolates. Finding what she wanted, she dropped it into her mouth. “Although there is one person I might have mentioned to that detective,” she said, around the mouthful of chocolate, “if I had thought of her at the time.”

Kate stared at the woman, astonished by her glaring inconsistencies. But she only said, in the calmest voice she could manage, “And who is that?”