possibilities of the instrument in detective work,” the Literary
Digest reported in 1912. “He is so enamored with it that he always
carries one in his pocket.” Just as Allan Pinkerton, in the
nineteenth century, was known as “the eye,” Burns, in the
twentieth century, had become “the ear.”
The detectives, hiding in another room, began listening to the
staticky voices of Rose and her boyfriend through earphones. But,
as is so often the case with surveillance, the rush of excitement
gave way to the tediousness of other people’s inner lives, and the
private detectives eventually stopped bothering to jot down the
innocuous details that they overheard.
Using more conventional means, however, the private detectives
made a startling discovery. The cabdriver who’d taken Anna to
Mollie’s house on the day she vanished told them that Anna had
asked him to stop first at the cemetery in Gray Horse. She had
climbed out and stumbled through the stones until she paused by
her father’s tomb. For a moment, she stood near the spot where
she, too, would soon be buried, as if offering a mourning prayer to
herself. Then she returned to the car and asked the driver to send
someone to bring flowers to her father’s tomb. She wanted his
grave to always be pretty.
While they continued to Mollie’s house, Anna leaned toward the
driver. He could smell her liquored breath as she divulged a secret:
she was going to have “a little baby.”
“My goodness, no,” he replied.
“I am,” she said.
“Is that so?”
“Yes.”
Detectives later confirmed the story with two people close to
Anna. She had also confided to them the news of her pregnancy.
Yet no one knew who the father was.