Miss Kopp's Midnight Confessions Read online

  “We picked her up at a boarding-house out in Pompton Lakes,” the officer said when Constance was settled. He turned his head so Edna Heustis wouldn’t see, then hoisted an eyebrow to underscore the menace to young girls found in such places. His skin hung in loose folds under his eyes and beneath his chin, bringing to mind an old hunting dog that still enjoyed the chase.

  Constance wished very much to explain to him that a girl renting a furnished room was not immediately a cause for suspicion, but she knew that if she started down that line, he’d be likely to walk out without finishing his recitation of the facts, and she’d be left with an inmate whose case would be all the more difficult to unravel. The act of holding her tongue was a sort of tactfulness that did not come naturally to her.

  “For what crime was she arrested?” was the question Constance settled upon. She allowed her hand to levitate over the column in the ledger-book where this particular bit of history was to be recorded.

  “Her mother came in after Christmas to make a charge of waywardness. We only just now had reason to be in Pompton Lakes, and thought why not pick this one up if she’s still there.”

  Edna pressed her lips together in a frown at the word waywardness, or perhaps it was the word mother. Constance knew that particular strain of defiance; she’d practiced it herself at a younger age. She nonetheless tried to sound strict with Edna when she said, “What were you doing by yourself at a boarding-house?”

  Edna squared her shoulders and looked directly at Constance, her hands clasped in front of her the way a schoolgirl addresses her teacher. “Working, ma’am. I found a place for myself at the DuPont powder works.”

  Well, of course she had, Constance thought but did not say. What else did Officer Randolph think she’d been doing there?

  “And how old are you? Tell the truth, or we’ll find out easily enough.”

  “I passed my eighteenth birthday just before Christmas.”

  “There’s no law against a girl of eighteen finding work and a place for herself.” Constance leaned back in her chair and folded her arms across her chest the way Sheriff Heath did when he made a pronouncement on a legal matter. “Why would your mother report you as wayward?”

  Officer Randolph shifted and sighed, tugging at his belt as if adjustments would have to be made if he were to stand there much longer. “Wouldn’t this be a matter for the judge?” he put in. “Or the sheriff?” He pushed open the door and looked with faint hope down the corridor, but no sheriff appeared.

  Constance’s sense of restraint abandoned her. She wiped her pen and said, “Officer, you’ve brought me a girl who has not, to my knowledge, committed any crime, nor has she any connection to Bergen County that I can see. She lives and works in Passaic County—at least, I hope she still works there. Dear, does anyone at the factory know where you’ve gone?”

  Miss Heustis sniffed—although this might have been more for show, as she had already sensed in Constance a co-conspirator and felt she had a role to play—and said, “I asked to write a note for the girls’ superintendent, but the officer said it wasn’t allowed.”

  Officer Randolph tried to protest, but Constance interrupted him. “That’s fine. I’ll see to it myself. I take it your mother lives here in Bergen County, which is why you’ve been brought to me?”

  Edna nodded. “Down in Edgewater.”

  At last Constance discovered the most tenuous of reasons for a law-abiding young woman to be carried against her will to the Bergen County Sheriff’s Department. She made a note of it in the ledger-book, alongside Edna’s name, her birthday, and the charges against her.

  Suspected waywardness, she wrote, underlining the first word. Although anyone placed under arrest is, at first, only suspected of the crime, she felt the need to put an emphasis upon it.

  Once her particulars had been recorded, Constance stood and took Edna by the arm. “Thank you, Officer. I’m sure you’re eager to get back to Paterson.”

  “I—yes, ma’am, thank you.” He looked briefly in the direction of the jail kitchen before he left. On gray and miserable days like this one, officers liked to linger around the jail, accepting a deputy’s offer of a cup of coffee and a little conversation before going back out on patrol. But Constance thought they’d had about as much of each other’s company as they could stand and sent him on his way.

  “I don’t like the looks of this,” Constance said when he was gone. “Did Officer Randolph ask your landlady about you before he took you away?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “And what about your employer? Did it seem to you that he’d stopped first at the powder works to make any inquiries about you?”

  “He didn’t, ma’am. He didn’t know where I worked.”

  Constance took a step back and looked her over. “Tell me something. Is there any truth to your mother’s accusation? Have you been staying out late at dance halls and movie palaces, or going around with a different man every night? Have you done anything at all that would give the judge cause to lay a charge of waywardness against you?”

  Edna gave an embarrassed little smile, thinking of Delia and the others, and shook her head. “No, ma’am. Mrs. Turnbull will tell you. The other girls will, too. I’m the dullest one in the house.”

  “You’re not dull,” Constance said. “You only wanted to work, and to pay your own way. Is that right?”

  Edna nodded. She seemed to Constance to be a modest and serious girl who wouldn’t know what to do inside a dance hall.

  “My mother doesn’t think I should be allowed to go away on my own,” Edna said, “but I never knew she went to the police over it.”

  “Your mother isn’t the one to decide,” Constance assured her. Constance’s own mother had tried to keep her from working, but that was before there were lady telephone operators and women reporters, much less female deputy sheriffs. It was a different age now. Parents had even less cause to try to keep their daughters from doing as they pleased.

  What she didn’t want to tell Edna was this: A judge will decide. And the judge won’t be shown the facts, because no one will bother to go and gather them.

  This was precisely the problem. The prosecutor’s office was in charge of proving that a crime had taken place, and that the arrest was proper. For evidence they would present Edna’s mother, who would say whatever mothers said when they wished to complain about their daughters.

  But who would put up a defense for Edna? She couldn’t afford an attorney. The prosecutor wouldn’t bother to disprove the charges. In fact, the prosecutor’s office seemed to be growing ever more fond of these cases, and liked to see them written up for the papers. It showed that they were doing something about immorality and vice.

  The fact that the charges had no merit mattered little to anyone —except the girl accused.

  That’s why Constance made a rather rash promise, one that she had no authority to make and no means to carry out. “Edna, I believe I’ll go myself to speak to your landlady and to the superintendent at the factory. The judge will listen to what I have to say about it.”

  Constance had a very definitive way of speaking and tended to state a thing as fact even if she wasn’t entirely sure about it. Her job demanded this sort of bravado: one could never hesitate in front of an inmate. As far as she knew, she had no authority to intervene in a criminal charge or address the judge on an inmate’s behalf. But something had to be done for the girl, and she was impatient to do it herself.

  “Leave it to me,” she told Edna, “and try not to worry over it.”

  “I’m not worried,” Edna said. In truth, she wasn’t. Upon passing into the custody of Deputy Kopp, Edna felt a great good fortune come over her. She’d never seen such a formidable-looking woman, ​and she knew that any woman who took on such unusual work would surely be sympathetic to Edna’s case.

  In fact, she wondered if Deputy Kopp had considered war-work herself and thought she might like to ask her about it. Here was a woman who wore a revolver as
easily as a string of pearls, commanded a powerful voice that could bark out an order, and possessed the disposition to go along with it. With a name like Kopp, she might well be German, but Edna suspected that her loyalties resided in New Jersey and not with the Kaiser.

  She was about to burst forth with all of this when Constance said, “Now, Edna, I’m going to put you in a quiet and clean cell and bring you something hot for lunch. I’ll go out to Pompton Lakes this afternoon. This entire mess will make a good story that you can tell your friends when I take you home tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow! You don’t mean that I’m to spend a night in jail?” A note of panic rose in Edna’s voice. She planted her feet and refused to take another step unless she was towed, which Constance could have done but didn’t.

  Edna had never even spoken to a police officer, much less been arrested by one. She couldn’t say with any certainty that she’d so much as seen the county jail before today. How was she to survive a night behind bars, surrounded by vagabonds, drunks, and criminals?

  Constance bent down awkwardly to look Edna in the eye. The girl’s lips were starting to waver and she looked as though she might cry.

  “Listen to me. I’m your friend in this. I’m going to get you settled, and then I’ll go right to work on setting you free. There’s no law against having a job and living on your own.”

  “The officer didn’t seem to know that.” Now the tears did come, in a rush of dread and shame.

  “But the judge will. I’ll see to it. I’m going to speak to the sheriff right now, and he’ll be on your side, too. You can’t lose, can you, with the two of us in your corner?”

  Edna didn’t know a thing about the sheriff, but what choice did she have? “I suppose not.”

  With that, Edna went along trustingly to her jail cell, and Constance went to tell Sheriff Heath that she had just decided upon a series of improvements to the way criminal justice was carried out in Bergen County.

  3

  IT WAS NOT UNUSUAL for Sheriff Heath to be rousted out of bed in the middle of the night over a train accident, a country house robbery, or some other calamity. He rarely enjoyed anything like a full night’s sleep, and he carried eggplant-hued shadows under his eyes to prove it. He spent mornings in his office, reading the mail and attending to business, which is where Constance found him after she settled Edna in her cell.

  His office was a plain room with nothing adorning the wall but a fire insurance calendar. There was a glass-fronted bookcase, a desk for him, and an oak table that was always piled with inmate records, correspondence, and case files. Across from his desk sat two battered old chairs for visitors. On the other side of the room was a little blue-tiled fireplace that he kept kindled all winter long, making it easily the most hospitable place in the jail.

  She walked in and went to stand in front of the fire, intending to launch immediately into the subject of Edna Heustis’s future, but she was derailed over a newspaper story.

  “I’ve just had a look at Miss Hart’s latest,” he said, rustling the paper in her direction. “She paints quite a picture of Hackensack’s girl sheriff.”

  “Wasn’t that the idea?”

  Carrie Hart was a New York City reporter who’d helped her with a case the year before. She was tired of writing about society luncheons and had persuaded her editor that a profile of New Jersey’s first lady deputy would be of interest to readers.

  Sheriff Heath had allowed it, thinking that a story about the unfortunate women who came into the jail, and the ways that a female deputy could advise them, would win support for his ideas of rehabilitation and reform. His detractors believed that jail should be a grim and miserable experience, thus deterring criminals from doing the sorts of things that might land them there. The sheriff had to fight for decent hygiene, wholesome food, and simple medical care for his inmates. He was even criticized for offering them improving books to read and church services on Sunday. To persuade the public, he was willing to let a reporter into the jail.

  Constance had agreed to the interview although she disliked the way the papers talked about her. Every newspaper in the country had a women’s page in need of comedic and dramatic filler, which meant that a story about a cop in a dress might circulate for months all over the country, always with creative alterations from enterprising copyeditors, until she hardly recognized herself in the headlines.

  Owing to the flurry of stories about her last case, in which she wrestled with an escaped fugitive on the subway steps in Brooklyn, Constance was subjected to a barrage of letters from lonely men and enterprising employers. She’d had a marriage proposal from a doctor in Cuba, an offer of a job as a factory foreman in Chicago, and a set of keys to a jail in El Paso if only she’d consent to come out West and run it.

  Her sister Norma took great pride in answering those letters. She spent hours composing sharp-tongued retorts and reading them aloud. Under her pen, the rejection of impertinent propositions had been elevated to an art form.

  Constance had a feeling that this story would only bring more letters her way. The sheriff held up the paper to show her the headline, then cleared his throat and read aloud.

  Girl Sheriff, a Real Lecoq, Detects Crime in a Novel Way

  “A woman should have the right to do any sort of work she wants to, provided she can do it.”

  Miss Constance A. Kopp, Under Sheriff of Bergen County, N.J., took a reporter back into the women’s ward of the county jail at Hackensack, carefully locking the door, and into one of the light and airy cells before she would talk. And Miss Kopp works: she was busy when the reporter arrived at the appointed hour. It was an hour later before the Under Sheriff could stop long enough for an interview.

  “Some women prefer to stay at home and take care of the house,” she continued. “Let them. There are plenty who like that kind of work enough to do it. Others want something to do that will take them out among people and affairs. I always wanted to do things from my early girlhood years.”

  Sheriff Heath put the paper down. “Was this to be a story about jobs for women, or about our inmates?”

  “The inmates, of course,” Constance said. “But she had to paint a picture for the reader. She warned me about that.”

  “No one warned me,” he said, reading on. “She says that you took her around, introduced her to the inmates . . . Ah, now she gets to it.”

  “The inmates are free to come see me at any time,” said Miss Kopp. “Besides being out on active work in connection with the duties which fall upon Sheriff Heath, I am matron of the prison. I am always friendly with the women. That is the way to win their confidence. In the end they always tell me the truth. They have learned that this is the only way I can help them.”

  “You try to help your prisoners, then?”

  “Certainly. Often a little help is all they need to get back on the road to straight living—sometimes help against others, but very often help against themselves. They come to me often at midnight, after I have gone to bed in my cell. At midnight a woman will tell almost anything if she finds one who is sympathetic to tell it to.”

  “That’s exactly why you hired a matron, so don’t complain about it,” Constance put in.

  “Oh, but there’s more to it. And you haven’t seen the pictures.”

  “Pictures? You know I didn’t agree to —”

  He held it out to her. A sketch artist had drawn a slimmer and more fashionable version of Constance in two scenes: comforting a crying girl, and wrestling a fugitive.

  “I never saw an illustrator, and he obviously never saw me,” she said.

  He read down a few more lines and said, “It says here that Miss Kopp has no desire to give up her work for matrimony, in spite of the proposals that have come to her from the newspaper publicity which her office has given her. She wants an active life.”

  “If only that were enough to put a stop to the proposals.”

  “Refusing to speak to reporters would put a stop to them,” the sheri
ff said.

  “You asked for the interview!”

  “I wanted a story about our good works.”

  “Is that all of it?”

  “I didn’t read the part where she wrote about your fetching appearance,” he said.

  Constance groaned. “You might as well.”

  He cleared his throat and read, “‘Miss Kopp is a young woman of abounding energy. She is large of build but . . .’” He faltered, and couldn’t look at her. She snatched the paper away from him and read, to her utter dread:

  . . . large of build but well-formed, and carries off her size regally, as the novelists would say. Her eyes are the velvety brown shade which matches her hair in color, again giving the novelist a chance for a page of descriptive matter.

  She threw it back at him. “I can’t believe Carrie wrote that.”

  He took the paper up again. “You haven’t seen the list of ‘Miss Kopp’s Ideas on Detection of Crime.’ Are you planning to write a book? This looks like a table of contents.”

  “What are my ideas?”

  He leaned over it and said, “‘The requisites for a woman who wants to do police work are determination, fearlessness, persistency, sympathy, love of work, and the ability to throw one’s self into the lives and feelings of the prisoners.’”

  “You must admit it’s a fine list.”

  He turned to yet a third page and scanned the last few paragraphs, which were tucked at the bottom corner below an advertisement for rubber gloves. “Why, here’s the bit about reform, at the very end, after everyone has stopped reading.”

  Much has been said during the last few years about prison reform and making such institutions reformatory rather than punitive, but none of them has worked out a more comprehensive scheme than the one devised and followed by Miss Kopp. Fortunately, she is supported by a progressive sheriff, Robert N. Heath, who has been a close student of modern prison management since he was appointed under sheriff five years ago and despite opposition, he has helped to work out these plans.