“I see. And this woman claims to be her child?”
“That’s right.”
“That’s not a lot to go on.” He sat there, thinking. Finally, he looked up. “All right. I’ll see what I can do.”
“That’s all we ask,” Tyler said.
The first move he made was to go to the Boston Public Library and read all the microfiche about the twenty-six-year-old scandal involving Harry Stanford, the governess, and Mrs. Stanford’s suicide. There was enough material for a novel.
His next step was to visit Simon Fitzgerald.
“My name is Frank Timmons. I’m—”
“I know who you are, Mr. Timmons. Judge Stanford asked me to cooperate with you. What can I do for you?”
“I want to trace Harry Stanford’s illegitimate daughter. She’d be about twenty-six, right?”
“Yes. She was born August 9, 1969, at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her mother named her Julia.” He shrugged. “They disappeared. I’m afraid that’s all the information we have.”
“It’s a beginning,” he said. “It’s a beginning.”
Mrs. Dougherty, the superintendent at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Milwaukee, was a gray-haired woman in her sixties.
“Yes, of course, I remember,” she said. “How could I ever forget it? There was a terrible scandal. There were stories in all the newspapers. The reporters here found out who she was, and they wouldn’t leave the poor girl alone.”
“Where did she go when she and the baby left here?”
“I don’t know. She left no forwarding address.”
“Did she pay her bill in full before she left, Mrs. Dougherty?”
“As a matter of fact…she didn’t.”
“How do you happen to remember that?”
“Because it was so sad. I remember she sat in that very chair you’re sitting in, and she told me that she could pay only part of her bill, but she promised to send me the money for the rest of it. Well, that was against hospital rules, of course, but I felt so sorry for her, she was so ill when she left here, and I said yes.”
“And did she send you the rest of the money?”
“She certainly did. About two months later. Now I recall. She had gotten a job at some secretarial service.”
“You wouldn’t happen to remember where that was, would you?”
“No. Goodness, that was about twenty-five years ago, Mr. Timmons.”
“Mrs. Dougherty, do you keep all your patients’ records on file?”
“Of course.” She looked up at him. “Do you want me to go through the records?”
He smiled pleasantly. “If you wouldn’t mind.”
“Will it help Rosemary?”
“It could mean a great deal to her.”
“If you’ll excuse me.” Mrs. Dougherty left the office.
She returned fifteen minutes later, holding a paper in her hand. “Here it is. Rosemary Nelson. The return address is The Elite Typing Service. Omaha, Nebraska.”
The Elite Typing Service was run by a Mr. Otto Broderick, a man in his sixties.
“We hire so many temporary employees.” He protested. “How do you expect me to remember someone who worked here that long ago?”
“This was a rather special case. She was a single woman in her late twenties, in poor health. She had just had a baby and—”
“Rosemary!”
“That’s right. Why do you remember her?”
“Well, I like to associate things, Mr. Timmons. Do you know what mnemonics is?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s what I use. I associate words. There was a movie out called Rosemary’s Baby. So when Rosemary came in and told me she had a baby, I put the two things together and…”
“How long was Rosemary Nelson with you?”
“Oh, about a year, I guess. Then the press found out who she was, somehow, and they wouldn’t leave her alone. She left town in the middle of the night to get away from them.”
“Mr. Broderick, do you have any idea where Rosemary Nelson went when she left here?”
“Florida, I think. She wanted a warmer climate. I recommended her to an agency I knew there.”
“May I have the name of that agency?”
“Certainly. It’s the Gale Agency. I can remember it because I associate it with the big storms they have down in Florida every year.”
Ten days after his meeting with the Stanford family, he returned to Boston. He had telephoned ahead, and the family was waiting for him. They were seated in a semicircle, facing him as he entered the drawing room at Rose Hill.