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Authors: Carol McCleary
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health issues myself and the doctor keeps telling me I need a vacation. I thought my trip around the world would be one, but instead it was very stressful. 6 But I mustn’t think of that for now I have more pressing issues at hand. I must help provide for his widow, Sarah, and their two small children, Charles and Gertrude. After our father died, Charles and I made a pact always to take care of each other. I will not let him down.
So when a book publisher, N.L. Munro, offered me an incredible three-year contract to write dime-novel fiction 7 in a series of installments for his weekly New York Family Story Paper —ten thousand dollars for the first year and fifteen thousand for each of the next two years 8 —I couldn’t refuse. While this is more than what Mr. Pulitzer will ever offer me, reporting the news is oxygen to my soul and I don’t know if I’m ready to give it up, but I do know that health-wise, I can’t write the books and remain a reporter.
My poor head wants to explode but I must focus back on the issue at hand—my attacker.
The first question is who was the man that attacked me in broad daylight on a public street? Hired help, I am sure. Nor did he appear to me to be someone that Hailey would have become romantically entangled with.
He looked street tough, the sort of man you’d find in a lower-class bar and hire to do dirty work, the kind that the police investigate.
I hadn’t paid much attention to him when he came aboard the trolley, but reflecting now, my impression of him is that while he wore a business suit, it needed cleaning and some attention from a hot iron, indicating to me that he probably isn’t married and that he might be down on the heels from a higher position in life than the one he now held.
He is hardly the important personage that Hailey had boasted about to both the maid and James the gatekeeper. Definitely just hired help, paid to get the diary and whatever else the lover wanted the covers pulled over. But what is in the diary that would make Hailey’s lover take the risk of having his thug commit a street crime that could send both him and the street tough to prison?
The lover’s identity? Or a more serious crime—the murder of Hailey?
That diary speaks from the grave. Words that might not be direct evidence of murder, but might point to the man who made her pregnant and raise questions that would make the police reconsider a simple verdict of suicide.
Then there is the other question eating away at my mind: How does the big story Hailey was working on fit in? She mentioned doing a major story to both James and the maid. Yet I found nothing about it in her room and found at her office only the red file with just filler stories. More important than the stories I didn’t find were the ashes left behind. The only explanation for the burning that my head will accept is that someone, possibly the mugger who attacked me, went into her office and burned all evidence of the story.
There has to be a connection between the story and the man Hailey had become infatuated with. That all references to the story were destroyed because they led back to the man who wanted his identity kept secret seems a reasonable conclusion to me. But could the two situations be completely alien to each other? A coincidence? No way will I accept that. The diary and the news story Hailey was working on are linked to Hailey’s lover and her lover obviously has no scruples when it comes to relying on violence to get what he wants. I might not have fared as well today if I’d met that thug in a dark alley.
But for the life of me, I can’t imagine how the lover and the news story could be linked. Hailey imitated me in carving out a career in reporting. And that meant that inevitably, any story that Hailey would go overboard about would involve crime, political dirty dealing, or other scandalous matters. The World is not a scandal sheet by any means, but it did not become the circulation champ by
So when a book publisher, N.L. Munro, offered me an incredible three-year contract to write dime-novel fiction 7 in a series of installments for his weekly New York Family Story Paper —ten thousand dollars for the first year and fifteen thousand for each of the next two years 8 —I couldn’t refuse. While this is more than what Mr. Pulitzer will ever offer me, reporting the news is oxygen to my soul and I don’t know if I’m ready to give it up, but I do know that health-wise, I can’t write the books and remain a reporter.
My poor head wants to explode but I must focus back on the issue at hand—my attacker.
The first question is who was the man that attacked me in broad daylight on a public street? Hired help, I am sure. Nor did he appear to me to be someone that Hailey would have become romantically entangled with.
He looked street tough, the sort of man you’d find in a lower-class bar and hire to do dirty work, the kind that the police investigate.
I hadn’t paid much attention to him when he came aboard the trolley, but reflecting now, my impression of him is that while he wore a business suit, it needed cleaning and some attention from a hot iron, indicating to me that he probably isn’t married and that he might be down on the heels from a higher position in life than the one he now held.
He is hardly the important personage that Hailey had boasted about to both the maid and James the gatekeeper. Definitely just hired help, paid to get the diary and whatever else the lover wanted the covers pulled over. But what is in the diary that would make Hailey’s lover take the risk of having his thug commit a street crime that could send both him and the street tough to prison?
The lover’s identity? Or a more serious crime—the murder of Hailey?
That diary speaks from the grave. Words that might not be direct evidence of murder, but might point to the man who made her pregnant and raise questions that would make the police reconsider a simple verdict of suicide.
Then there is the other question eating away at my mind: How does the big story Hailey was working on fit in? She mentioned doing a major story to both James and the maid. Yet I found nothing about it in her room and found at her office only the red file with just filler stories. More important than the stories I didn’t find were the ashes left behind. The only explanation for the burning that my head will accept is that someone, possibly the mugger who attacked me, went into her office and burned all evidence of the story.
There has to be a connection between the story and the man Hailey had become infatuated with. That all references to the story were destroyed because they led back to the man who wanted his identity kept secret seems a reasonable conclusion to me. But could the two situations be completely alien to each other? A coincidence? No way will I accept that. The diary and the news story Hailey was working on are linked to Hailey’s lover and her lover obviously has no scruples when it comes to relying on violence to get what he wants. I might not have fared as well today if I’d met that thug in a dark alley.
But for the life of me, I can’t imagine how the lover and the news story could be linked. Hailey imitated me in carving out a career in reporting. And that meant that inevitably, any story that Hailey would go overboard about would involve crime, political dirty dealing, or other scandalous matters. The World is not a scandal sheet by any means, but it did not become the circulation champ by
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