These Shallow Graves

by Jennifer Donnelly

  Perhaps he’d started to unload the chamber and had put the loose bullets on his desk, but was distracted by something. He closed the chamber to attend to the disturbance, then picked the revolver up again, forgetting that it wasn’t empty, and somehow it went off. That was the only logical explanation she could come up with.

  “But it doesn’t explain you,” she said, frowning at the bullet. She turned it over and looked at the bottom. The letters W.R.A. Co. arched across it. Under them was stamped .38 LONG.

  Maybe Papa collapsed across his desk after the gun fired, sweeping the loose bullets off as he fell to the floor, she thought. And then Theakston or a policeman kicked one across the room.

  Her eyes traced a possible trajectory from the desk to the window.

  It must’ve been kicked with quite a bit of force, though, she mused, to travel over a thick rug all the way to the other side of the room.

  “Oh, what does it matter how it got there?” she asked herself, sighing. “He’s gone. And no amount of puzzling will bring him back.”

  She opened the cabinet where the revolver had been kept—her mother had made the police take the gun away—and placed the bullet on a shelf next to a box of ammunition. Her mother sometimes came in here, and Jo didn’t want her to see it. It would make her even more distraught than she already was.

  Jo slowly walked around the room, touching the mantel, then her father’s humidor. The edge of his desk. His chair. Images came to her. She remembered him handing her a kitten with a pink bow. And twirling her around at a skating party. She remembered him dancing with her mother, the two of them so handsome together: her mother a cool blond beauty, and her father with his strong Montfort features—his thick black hair and gray eyes like her own.

  Often, those eyes had shone with mischief and merriment. But under the laughter, Jo had sometimes glimpsed a shadow. Her father had spent hours here in his study standing at the window, hands clasped behind his back, gazing down at the street—as if expecting someone.

  Jo recalled the first time she’d found him that way. She was little, and was supposed to have been asleep, but she’d gotten out of bed, snuck up on him, and said, “Who are you waiting for, Papa?”

  He’d spun around and she’d seen that his face was as white as chalk, and that his eyes were filled with emotion: fear, which she knew, for she was afraid of many things—spiders and thunder and circus clowns—and sorrow, which she did not know. Not then.

  “Oh, how you startled me, Jo!” he’d said, smiling. And then he’d told her he wasn’t waiting for anyone, just thinking over a business deal.

  Even then she hadn’t believed him, and as she’d grown older she’d wished he would confide in her about whatever troubled him. But he hadn’t, and now he never would.

  For a moment, Jo saw her father again standing at the window. Watching. Waiting. And suddenly it was there—the word she hadn’t been able to come up with. The one word that best described him.

  Haunted.

  “Park Row, please, Dolan. The offices of the Standard,” Jo said, stepping into her carriage.

  Jo’s driver frowned. “Mrs. Montfort said I was to take you to tea at the Reverend Willis’s, Miss Jo, then straight home,” he said.

  “You were, Dolan. But then there was a change of plan. Did Mama not inform you?” Jo asked lightly. “She’s must’ve forgotten.”

  Dolan, his hand on the carriage’s door, gave Jo a long look. “There was no change of plan, was there now?”

  Jo was nabbed. “No, Dolan, there wasn’t. But please take me to Park Row,” she begged.

  “What will your mother say if she finds out you’ve been down there?”

  “She won’t if you don’t tell her. I can’t go home. Not yet. It’s miserable there with the shades drawn and Mama shut up in her room all day and Papa’s portrait draped in black,” Jo said, a desperate note in her voice.

  Dolan shook his head. “You’ve been able to get round me since you were five years old. We’ll go, but we need to be quick. No dillydallying.”

  Jo thanked him, greatly relieved. She’d been confined to her house for the last two weeks, ever since her father’s funeral, as she was in mourning. But unlike her proper mother, who preferred darkened rooms in her grief, Jo yearned for distraction. Her lively mind withered with nothing to occupy it.

  Yesterday, her uncle Phillip had given her a reprieve. He was her father’s older brother, and the executor of his will, and was helping to dispose of his assets. The Montforts had made their fortune as shipbuilders in seventeenth-century New York, and all of Charles’s holdings were maritime related: the Standard, a city newspaper that had once been a shipping-news daily; three lumber mills; and a rope factory. Jo’s mother had no understanding of her late husband’s business affairs, and no wish to gain one, so she’d asked Phillip to sell everything to outside parties except for Charles’s largest asset—his stake in Van Houten Shipping. Charles had been a partner in the firm, along with Phillip and four other men. The firm was originally formed by seven partners—one other had died years ago. Now the surviving partners would buy his share and divide it.

  Phillip had visited Anna and Jo last night to tell them that he’d already found a buyer for one of the lumber mills. He’d also mentioned that Charles had specified a few personal bequests in his will, including a rare King James bible for the Reverend Willis and a silver whiskey flask for Arnold Stoatman, the Standard’s editor. They would all require personal notes.

  “Would you take care of this for me, Jo?” he’d asked. “You can present bequests to the household staff personally. Dolan can deliver the remainder—except for the bible. I think a member of the family should deliver that. Anna, will you allow Jo to do this?”

  Jo’s mother had hesitated. “It’s far too soon for her to be out and about,” she’d finally replied.

  “I defer to you, of course,” her uncle had said, “but remember that Jo is young and the young need diversions, especially during dark times. Surely a trip to the rectory wouldn’t be frowned upon?”

  Mourning was no longer quite the elaborate affair it had been a generation ago, but custom still dictated a period of seclusion and the donning of somber clothing. Jo would wear black for six months, her mother for two years. After that, touches of white were allowed, and then gray or mauve.

  Attendance at balls and parties was not allowed for half a year, but mourners could attend church and, after three months, concerts. Visitors could not be received for several months—except for family and close friends. Nor could the bereaved pay social calls to anyone not in their immediate circle.

  At Charles Montfort’s funeral luncheon, Grandmama had loudly opined that the whole blasted custom was a pretentious middle-class invention and refused to have anything to do with it.

  “Black dresses for months on end … pah! If I wanted to wear black all the time, I’d join the clergy.”

  Jo’s mother had relented, and Jo had been grateful to her uncle for providing her with an escape. She’d been so desperate to prolong that escape that she’d grabbed the little box containing the whiskey flask for Mr. Stoatman as she’d left the house that morning, hoping she’d be able to persuade Dolan to take her to Park Row.

  They were heading down Bowery now. Jo’s carriage was enclosed, the better to avoid noxious smells and bad weather, but its doors had generously sized windows, and she looked out of hers excitedly. An elevated railway ran the length of the street. Shopgirls walked arm in arm underneath it, laughing and chattering. Men loitering in doorways eyed them boldly. Barkers stood on wooden boxes shouting about dime circuses and snake dancers. Newsboys shouted the day’s headlines.

  Jo knew she shouldn’t sit at the edge of her seat, her face pressed to the glass—Eager young ladies aren’t ladies at all, her mother would’ve said—but she couldn’t help it. The New York before her now was so much more interesting than t
he one she knew, and alone in her carriage, away from the oppressiveness of her mother’s rules, she could give free rein to her insatiable curiosity.

  Her carriage crossed Grand Street, with the tenements of Little Italy to her right and the Jewish East Side to the left. The sidewalks were teeming with immigrants, and Jo yearned to know more about them. She’d heard stories: they lived ten to a room, spat on their fruit to clean it, ate pickles for breakfast, and were poor and wretched. But as she watched the people, she wondered if they knew they were wretched. They didn’t act it. They shouted their greetings. Sang their wares. Kissed each other on the cheek. They poked and slapped and hugged their children.

  One woman in particular caught Jo’s attention. Her clothes were grubby and ill-fitting. Her hair had been scraped into a messy bun. She was buying potatoes from a pushcart man, and he must’ve said something funny because suddenly she was laughing—with her head thrown back and a meaty hand pressed to her enormous, jiggling bosom.

  What’s it like to laugh like that? Jo wondered. She didn’t know. She never had. It wasn’t done north of Washington Square.

  A few minutes later, her carriage turned onto Park Row, home to many of the city’s newspapers. It stopped in front of the Standard’s building—an old, squat brick structure nestled up against the tall new Tribune building.

  Dolan jumped down from his seat and opened the door. “In and out, Miss Jo,” he cautioned.

  “I won’t be a minute,” Jo promised.

  Her heart beat faster as she stepped inside the building. The small room in which she now stood served as the reception area. A wall separated it from the pressroom, but it did little to mute the pounding of the presses or contain the sharp, oily smell of ink. Copyboys raced down a staircase at her right, rushing finished stories to typesetters. Reporters raced up the same stairs, hurrying to the newsroom.

  Jo watched them with a longing so intense, it hurt. She’d loved this place from the day she’d first seen it. Her father had owned the paper for twenty years, but he left the running of it to his editor in chief. He made regular visits, however, to make sure the Standard’s tone reflected his views, and had sometimes brought Jo with him—over her mother’s objections. As a child, she’d thought all the noise and commotion was the most wild, wonderful game, but as she’d gotten older, she understood why everyone rushed around so: they were chasing a story.

  How Jo envied them. To have a purpose in life—what does that feel like? she wondered.

  “Can I help you, miss?” the harried young woman behind the desk asked brusquely.

  “Yes,” Jo replied. “I’m Josephine Montfort. I’d like to see Mr. Stoatman. I have a bequest for him from my late father.”

  The young woman’s manner immediately became more accommodating. That often happened when Jo revealed her surname.

  “Of course, Miss Montfort,” she said, “and please accept my condolences. Mr. Stoatman’s in a meeting at the moment, but you may wait for him here or outside his office.”

  “I’ll wait upstairs. Thank you,” Jo said.

  She climbed the staircase, narrowly avoiding a collision with a copyboy, and emerged in the newsroom. It was one long open space that ran from front to back of the building. Two offices, built out from a wall, stood at the left of the landing—the city editor’s and Stoatman’s—the editor in chief.

  The sound of clacking typewriters was deafening. Reporters were yelling at copyboys and the city editor was angrily crumpling a typed story while bellowing that his grandmother could have done a better job on it. Jo made her way to Stoatman’s office and stood by the closed door, spellbound.

  Her father liked to say that when he inherited the Standard, it was nothing but a small daily devoted to maritime news and that he’d made it into a small daily devoted to marriage-time news. It was the preferred paper of the upper class: sober, genteel, and a stark contrast to Mr. Pulitzer’s and Mr. Hearst’s papers, with their lurid headlines. It reported on city politics, cultural events, and social happenings, and refused to print tawdry tales of murder and mayhem. More important to its readers, it also ran the birth, death, and wedding announcements of New York’s best families.

  Remember Josephine, there are only three times in a woman’s life when her name may appear in the papers, Jo’s mother often said. When she is born, when she is married, and when she dies.

  The merely wealthy, or worse yet—the newly wealthy, searched in vain for their names in the Standard’s columns. It was the doings of the old Dutch and English families—those whose ancestors had built New York from a rough-and-tumble trading post at the end of the world to a mighty port city in the center of it—that the paper documented.

  “You might be a while, miss,” a voice said. “Would you care to sit?”

  Jo turned, startled. A reporter was standing close by, holding a chair. He looked to be eighteen or nineteen years old and had dark hair, a handsome face, and blue eyes—the bluest she’d ever seen.

  “I beg your pardon?” she said, flustered. She wasn’t used to speaking with strange men.

  “I said you might be a while. Stoatman’s got some lackey from the commissioner’s office in with him.” He put the chair down next to her.

  “Thank you,” she said. “You’re very kind.”

  She tried to look away, but couldn’t. His eyes were not only impossibly blue, but frank and amused. She felt that they could see inside her, that he could see her heart and its sudden, silly fluttering. Blushing, she sat down.

  As he returned to his desk, she glanced at him from under the brim of her hat. Had she thought him handsome? He was glorious. He wore a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a tweed vest. His shoulders were broad and his forearms muscled. Thick, wavy brown hair curled over his ears and down the back of his neck. His nose had a bump on its bridge, like a boxer’s. A strong jaw and high cheekbones gave his face character. His smile was slow and easy.

  Jo made herself look away. She untied the bow on the box containing Mr. Stoatman’s bequest. As she was retying it, her eyes fell on the handsome reporter again. He was talking with two other young men about exciting things—a robbery, a stabbing, a three-alarm fire. Their conversation was so different from the stultifying ones that went on in her home.

  Newport or Saratoga this summer? I hear Ellie Montgomery’s had her drawing room repapered. Have you seen Minnie Stevens’s herbaceous borders?

  As Jo continued to eavesdrop, one of the reporters brought up a topic that was more than exciting; it was scandalous. She leaned forward, the better to hear him.

  “Hey, Eddie, you hear about the chorus girl who fell in front of a train this morning?”

  “She didn’t fall, she jumped.”

  That was the same young man who’d offered Jo a seat. Now she knew his name—Eddie. He was leaning back in his chair, tossing an eraser in the air as he spoke.

  “You sure about that?” the first reporter asked.

  “I got it straight from the horse’s mouth—Oscar Rubin over at the morgue,” Eddie said.

  “What happened?”

  “She was carrying on with the Beekman boy. Beekman senior found out and sent junior off to an aunt in Boston. Problem was, the idiot put the girl in the family way. He told her he’d marry her, then did a bunk.”

  Jo gasped. Andy Beekman had unexpectedly left for Boston just a few days ago. Now she knew why. And to think that Addie had served him tea at her father’s funeral luncheon!

  “Stoatman know this?”

  “Yeah, but he won’t run it,” Eddie replied, still tossing his eraser. “He’ll kill it. Just like he killed my story on Charlie Montfort.”

  “What story? There is no story. Montfort’s gun went off. It was an accident. End of story.”

  “It wasn’t an accident,” Eddie said.

  And suddenly it was no longer exciting to be in the newsroom. Sudden
ly Jo couldn’t breathe.

  “The cops said it was.”

  Eddie snorted. “They were paid to say it was. A rookie I know was there. He saw the body and he says different.”

  “Yeah? What’s he say?” the other reporter asked, snatching Eddie’s eraser out of the air.

  Eddie sat up. “That Charlie Montfort put his revolver to his head and blew his brains out.”

  It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be. Jo stood up on shaking legs and approached the reporter.

  “How dare you. The dreadful thing you just said about Charles Montfort … it’s a lie. Why did you say it?” she asked. Far too loudly.

  Heads turned. The young man looked at her. “What’s that to you, miss?” he asked.

  Jo was about to tell him when the door to the editor in chief’s office opened and Stoatman emerged, holding the stub of a cigar in one hand, ushering a man out with the other. Short and bald, he wore an ink-stained shirt, a vest, and ash-covered trousers. The two men said their goodbyes; then Stoatman spotted Jo.

  “Miss Montfort? What an unexpected pleasure,” he said. “What brings you to the newsroom?”

  Jo, still glaring at Eddie, saw his eyes widen at the mention of her name. He knows who I am now and he’s worried I’ll get him into trouble, she thought. Good. He deserves it.

  “This … this …” Boy, she was going to say to Stoatman. This boy should not speak ill of my father. But she changed her mind. “… bequest,” she said, handing him the box. “It’s for you from my father.”

  Stoatman’s perpetually gruff expression softened. “How kind. My condolences, Miss Montfort. Please come in,” he said.

  He ushered Jo into his office, shutting the door behind them, and offered her a chair. He offered her tea, too, but she declined. She was still upset and didn’t want to be here in Stoatman’s office, choking on cigar smoke. She wanted to go back into the newsroom and make that boy answer her.