Free The Girls of Murder City by Douglas Perry Page B

with another man, Belva returned home as if nothing unusual had occurred. Over the three years of their marriage, she never showed any sign of feeling guilty. She never offered a hint that she regretted any of her actions. She did what she wanted, and that made it right.
    Belva strolled up the front walk of the Gaertner estate, her head high, as expertly put together as always. She had no plans to talk to William about the events of the previous night; she was just going to go on with her life—with their life. But on this morning she was met with a surprise. The front door was locked. She knocked but received no reply. She banged and banged, and finally she heard shoes stepping toward the door. When it was opened, she found not a familiar, apologetic servant but a hard, strange face—a private detective—staring out at her. He wouldn’t let her enter.
    Belva, steaming with such fury that her floppy hat risked burning to a cinder on her head, stomped downtown, where she employed a burly guardian of her own. They returned to the house and forced their way inside. William, hiding upstairs, called the police in a panic.
    A car rolled up not long after. “What’s the matter?” the officer asked when he found a standoff in the marbled foyer.
    Belva wheeled on the uniformed policeman, startled at the extreme measures her husband was taking. First a private bullyboy, now an official one. “I don’t know of any reason why we need the services of the police force here,” she snapped.
    William gave her a reason: This wasn’t her home anymore. “She wants to stay in the flat,” he told the officer.
    “Who is she?”
    “My wife,” William said.
    Ah. With that, the officer decided it was time to move on. The police hated domestic disputes, especially when they involved wealthy men who had influence. He advised them to take it up with their lawyers, then turned and beat a quick retreat back to the station house.
    William already had a lawyer on retainer. He would be filing for divorce, citing cruelty. Belva went out and got her own lawyer—Charles Erbstein, perhaps the best-known attorney in the city. She also hired a set of private eyes to match those that William had. The dispute, inevitably, hit the papers. The Tribune, breaking the story on April 9, 1920, assumed the necessary mocking tone:
    Eight detectives are comfortably ensconced at the home of Mr. and Mrs. William Gaertner, 5474 Hyde Park boulevard. Mr. Gaertner filed suit for divorce last week and invited Mrs. Gaertner to leave. When she declined, he summoned the police. They were neutral.
    Then he retained a private detective to watch the home. Mrs. Gaertner retaliated by employing one to protect her interests and watch the other. The husband came back with one more. She then supplemented hers as an assistant. That made it two and two. But Mr. Gaertner added a couple more and so did Mrs. Gaertner.
    Now she is consistently followed as was Mary by her little lamb. The eight sleuths accompany her to the theaters, the shopping district, the telephone, even to the mail box.
    “It’s a rather trying situation,” Belva told the American. “You see, between my husband’s corps of detectives and my own crew I hardly know where I’m at. I need help.”
    She admitted she was “having a deuce of a time” remembering which detectives were hers and which his, and, bonding with a female reporter from the Chicago Evening Post, she asked how the reporter would handle the state of affairs. Ione Quinby, a cherubic twenty-eight-year-old with fashionable black bangs, took the question seriously. She looked about the expansive manse, with its high ceilings, marble floors, and expensive furniture beyond her imagination. There was a lot of territory to cover in this one building and a lot of opportunity for a bad apple to nick some pretty finery. “It seems to me,” Quinby said, “you should get a couple of neutral dicks to keep an eye on both crews.”
    It wasn’t the best