Love & Other Crimes: Stories by Sara Paretsky

Author:Sara Paretsky [Paretsky, Sara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780062915542
Google: XY2KyQEACAAJ
Amazon: 0062915541
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2020-06-08T23:00:00+00:00

Murder at the Century of Progress

1

23 May 1933

Miss Charlotte Palmer

c/o Stevens Hotel, Chicago

Letter to Mrs. Ben (Chlotilde) Milder

The Vicarage, St Clement-sur-Mare

England

Now that we are finally arrived in Chicago I have leisure to write you a proper letter. My nephew may have been foolish enough to lose a fortune to a plausible rogue, but he is gentleman enough to know how to look after a dithery elderly woman. From the moment he met my train at Paddington until I was ensconced today in the Stevens Hotel, every attention that could be paid to my comfort was paid. He even had champagne waiting for me shipboard! And when I gave him a gentle scold for his extravagance, he reminded me that our American cousins still practice their absurd Prohibition and that it would be some time before I could partake of alcohol again. Of course, I do not drink aside from the occasional sherry, but even my respected father saw nothing amiss in a glass of champagne for women on very special occasions. On the dear Queen’s Golden Jubilee—well, that was long ago, and I was a foolish girl of eighteen, and those reminiscences are not the news you are hoping to read here.

We arrived only this morning, so I have had no time to look around me. At the station poor Eric could not make any of the porters understand him: the Oxford accent does not translate well in this city of immigrants. When I thought we might have to spend the entire day on the platform, a rude man from the second-class car shoved his way past us. I was about to utter a sharp rebuke when he obligingly carried all of our cases to a taxi! He disappeared before I could thank him. Although he was gruff in manner, I suppose one must label him a diamond in the rough.

How extraordinary that Eric should be your cousin on your mother’s aunt’s side, as well as my own sister’s grandson. Life is filled with these most curious coincidences, but I am frankly glad that I have an intimate at home with whom to share my dismay at our relation’s stupidity!

The city is in a great bustle with the World’s Fair about to open, certainly an ideal setting for a confidence artist. Whether the man who “fleeced” Eric (I believe that is the police term for taking someone’s money through a confidence trick) will be bold enough to show his face here, I cannot say. But Eric seems convinced such a man will want to “work” this exposition; he says a venue like this is irresistible to the confidence artist.

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