These Shallow Graves

by Jennifer Donnelly

  “Mr. Ru—Oscar,” she said loudly, interrupting Eddie midquestion. “Would you happen to know if Charles Montfort’s body was brought here?”

  “It wasn’t,” Oscar said. “We were called to the house.”

  “You went to the house?” Eddie said. “You didn’t tell me that.”

  “You didn’t ask,” Oscar replied.

  Jo was relieved to know her father hadn’t been brought here. “He was a suicide, too,” she said under her breath, her eyes still on sad Oliver Little.

  But Oscar heard her. “No, he wasn’t,” he said.

  Jo turned to him. “What did you say?”

  “I said Charles Montfort wasn’t a suicide.”

  Jo couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She shot Eddie a look. “So his death was an accident?”

  “No, Miss Jones.”

  “But if it wasn’t one and it wasn’t the other—”

  Oscar gave Eddie a look. “This one’s going to have to sharpen up or Park Row will eat her alive,” he said.

  “Oscar, please,” Jo pressed.

  “Charles Montfort didn’t kill himself,” Oscar said, looking at Jo over the top of his glasses. “Charles Montfort was murdered.”

  “Miss Montfort? Miss Montfort, where are you going? Stop. Stop,” Eddie said, worry in his voice.

  “Home, Mr. Gallagher,” Jo said, staggering like a drunk. “I’m going home.”

  “That’s not the way to your home. It’s the way to the East River.”

  Jo stopped. She turned around and started walking in the opposite direction. She’d stumbled out of the morgue only moments ago, and Eddie had hurried after her.

  “You can’t go home. Not like this. You’re in shock,” he said now.

  “I’m fine,” Jo said.

  But she wasn’t. Her face was as white as chalk. Her body was freezing cold. She hardly knew where she was. She’d just been told a terrible truth, and it had shattered her.

  “How do you know Charles Montfort was murdered?” Eddie had asked Oscar back in the morgue.

  “Dr. Koehler—my boss—got called to the Montforts’ house. I went with him. He glanced at the body, opened the gun, and ruled the death a suicide,” Oscar had said contemptuously. “Then Phillip Montfort arrived. He collapsed when he saw the body. Koehler got him up and took him into another room, which gave me the chance to do my own exam. There were a couple of cops hanging around. I told them I needed to take notes for Koehler. They didn’t care what I did. They were too busy chowing on the coffee and doughnuts the butler brought them.”

  “What made you want to do your own exam?” Eddie had asked.

  “A lot of things didn’t look right,” Oscar had replied. “The entry wound was in the right temple, and Charles Montfort was right-handed—”

  “Which makes sense,” Eddie had cut in.

  “Yes, but it’s the only thing that did,” Oscar had countered. “The gun was still in Montfort’s hand, and suicides usually drop it. The entry wound itself was wrong, too. Most suicides press the muzzle of a gun right against their heads. When the gun’s fired, gases and bits of gunpowder are driven directly into the skin, causing it to char and rip. Sometimes you can see the muzzle’s imprint, too. Montfort’s wound showed no imprint, no charring, no ripping. It didn’t show any tattooing, either—which is a kind of stippling that happens when gunpowder particles hit the skin from a short distance, maybe six inches to two feet. That means the bullet was fired from farther than two feet.”

  “Which is tough to do if you’re shooting yourself,” Eddie had said.

  “Exactly. Also, the exit wound was at the back of the skull, at a pretty sharp angle to the entry wound—which again suggests the bullet was fired from a distance. I’d expect a straighter trajectory and an exit wound on the left side of the skull if Montfort fired the gun himself,” Oscar had explained.

  Jo had had to steady herself against a table; her legs had begun to shake again. Eddie hadn’t noticed. He’d been scribbling in his notebook. Oscar hadn’t either; he’d kept on talking.

  “After I looked at Montfort’s wounds, I opened the cylinder of his revolver. The markings on the bottom of the casing from the bullet that killed Montfort didn’t match those of the unfired bullets. They were all .38 longs, but the bullet that was fired was marked UMC .38 S & W—which means it was made by Remington. The others were marked W.R.A. Co. .38 LONG. That’s Winchester’s mark.”

  “Did you tell anyone this?” Eddie had asked, his voice grave.

  “I told Koehler after we left. I’ve learned not to offer my opinions during an exam. I told him I believed that the lethal bullet was from a different gun. He didn’t agree. He said he’d seen the different markings but didn’t think they were relevant. He said Charles Montfort had simply loaded his revolver with two different makes of ammunition. Maybe there was only one bullet left in his box of Remingtons, so he opened a box of Winchesters.”

  “It’s possible,” Eddie had said.

  “Yes, but there was no empty box of Remingtons. Not in the cabinet where Montfort kept his ammunition. And not in his garbage can, either. I looked.”

  “What did Koehler say to that?”

  “That Montfort might’ve loaded the gun days ago and tossed the box. Or he might’ve loaded it at a shooting range. Apparently, he liked to practice. He told me that Charles Montfort’s death was a suicide, plain and simple, but that after speaking with Phillip Montfort, he’d decided to rule it an accidental shooting to spare the family further pain.” Oscar snorted. “And to ensure himself further gain. I bet Phillip Montfort paid him a bundle to rule the death accidental, and Koehler didn’t want me to screw it up for him. In fact, he told me I was free to disagree with his decision … and free to seek employment elsewhere if I did.”

  Oscar’s story had had a terrible effect on Jo. She’d thought she would break down while he told it. She had managed to hold herself together through sheer force of will, knowing that if she suddenly became emotional, he’d want to know why. When he’d finally finished, she had managed to smile and say goodbye, and then she’d lurched out of the morgue and into the street.

  “He was murdered,” she said to Eddie now. “My father was murdered. Someone fired a bullet into his head and left him to die. I have to go to the authorities, Mr. Gallagher. Right away.”

  “First, let’s find a bench so you can sit down for a minute,” Eddie said, trying to calm her.

  “If you could just tell me where the nearest police station is,” Jo said. She stumbled over a pile of horse manure. Once again, Eddie had to catch her before she fell.

  “Come on,” he said, putting an arm around her. “We’re going to take that cab over there to my place. I’ll fix you something hot to drink, then get you home.”

  Jo shook her head. “I don’t think it’s a good idea, Mr. Gallagher.”

  “None of this is a good idea, Miss Montfort. I tried to tell you that.”

  “Yes, you did. I’m sorry,” Jo said weakly.

  “I’m sorry, too,” Eddie said in a gentle voice. “Now, please come with me before you faint in the street.”

  “I’m fine. Really. I just stumbled, that’s all,” Jo protested.

  Eddie’s expression was grim. “You sure did,” he answered. “Into something a lot worse than horse manure.”

  Eddie’s apartment—twenty feet square, with an alcove for his bed—was small, Spartan, and full of books.

  “Have a seat,” he said, gesturing to a rickety wooden table with a chair on either side. He took off his jacket and hung it over the back of one.

  Jo sat, but as soon as she did, Oscar’s voice was in her head again. She stood up and paced around, desperate to distract herself.

  Eddie tried to make his bed without her noticing, then filled a kettle with water and carried it to the small fireplace, where coal embers
glowed. He poked them to life, set a trivet over them, and placed the teakettle on it.

  “I don’t have a stove. The landlady does our cooking,” he explained. “But I can boil water. Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  “Tea, please.”

  “Uh, how about coffee?”

  Jo nodded. “Cream, please. Two sugars.”

  While Eddie ground some coffee beans in a small wooden hand grinder, Jo looked around his room, fascinated. She’d never been in a boy’s room before, except her cousin Robert’s when they were little. And Eddie’s was far different from that one.

  Besides a bed, the alcove contained a night table and a reading lamp. There was a small sink in the room. A shelf above it held mugs, glasses, and a bottle of whiskey. Under the single window, on a small table, was a typewriter. A dresser stood against one wall. Cuff links, a penknife, and coins were scattered across it. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman lay on top of it as well as Walden by Henry David Thoreau. Jo was excited to see Ten Days in a Mad-House by Nellie Bly.

  She picked up Bly’s book and paged through it, remembering how Bly’s articles on the abuse she endured while an inmate at the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island sparked a huge amount of public outrage. Because of her work, changes had been implemented in the way the mentally ill were treated.

  “Miss Bly is impossibly brave, isn’t she?” Jo said, putting the book back.

  “You read Nellie Bly?” Eddie asked.

  “Everything she writes,” Jo said. “I try to write like her, too. A little,” she added shyly.

  Eddie, fiddling with a coffee press now, turned to look at her. “Seriously?”

  Jo nodded. “I wrote a piece for my school newspaper on the abuses suffered by local mill girls. I interviewed several of them.”

  “Miss Montfort, you are full of surprises. I’d love to read it.”

  “I shall have to send you the original, then,” Jo said with a sigh, “for I doubt it will ever be published. Our headmistress is more interested in poems about cats than the welfare of mill workers.”

  “You read Julius Chambers? Jake Riis?”

  Jo nodded eagerly. Like Bly, Chambers and Riis represented a new breed of journalist who wrote about social ills in the hopes of rectifying them.

  “I read whatever of theirs I can,” she said, “but it’s difficult. Mama doesn’t permit newspapers in the house. I have to get Katie to smuggle them in when I’m at home, and a delivery boy to do it at school. I have Riis’s How the Other Half Lives, though. I keep it under my bed.”

  Eddie laughed. “I keep it next to mine. I really admire his work. He tells stories that never get told. I hope to do the same one day.”

  “Why not now?”

  Eddie snorted. “At the Standard? Please.”

  The kettle whistled. He wrapped a dishrag around its handle, took it off the coals, and poured the steaming water into his coffee press. “How about no cream, no sugar?” he asked. “I haven’t got either.”

  “Black is fine,” Jo said. She sat down again, looking forward to a warming drink.

  Eddie carried the press to the table. He took two mugs off the shelf over the sink, checked them to make sure they were clean, then set them on the table, too. “You’ll have to forgive Oscar,” he said. “He didn’t know who you really are. If he had, he might’ve softened his words. Then again, knowing him, maybe not.”

  Jo nodded. She didn’t want to talk about it. She’d managed to pull herself together but could easily fall apart again. She’d do that later when she was alone in her room.

  “The Adirondacks,” she said, picking up a schedule for the New York & Central that was lying on the table. “Do you go there often?” she asked, hoping to change the subject.

  “As often as I can,” Eddie said.

  “We do, too,” Jo said. “Every August. We have a camp on Saranac Lake. My father takes me fishing in his canoe. We row out to … rather, we did row out—” Water splashed onto the schedule. Jo touched her cheek. It was wet. She realized she was crying.

  “Forgive me,” she said. She pulled a handkerchief out of her jacket pocket, dabbed at her eyes, and tried to stop, but her tears only fell harder. Mortified, she got to her feet. “Th-thank you. … I’ll be on my w-w-way,” she said, her voice hitching. She had to get out of there. Now. Before she made a spectacle of herself.

  “Miss Montfort,” Eddie said. “I really think you should sit for another minute.”

  “I—I can’t. I have to go,” Jo said, her head down so he couldn’t see her tears. “I have to get back into my house and Theakston might be up and—” She stopped midsentence and raised her face to his. “It was bad enough that I’d lost my father, but now … now … ” She looked at him helplessly. “Someone killed him, Mr. Gallagher. … Why? Why would someone kill my papa?”

  And suddenly she was sobbing like a child. She hadn’t cried for her father once since Bram and Addie had broken the news to her. She hadn’t been able to. The tears wouldn’t come. But they came now. In an agonizing torrent.

  In an instant, Eddie was out of his chair. He pulled her to him. She buried her head in his neck and wept.

  Eddie held her tightly, and let her.

  “Drink it,” Eddie said. “You have to.”

  “I can’t. It smells terrible.”

  “Down the hatch. All in one go.”

  Jo, sitting down at Eddie’s table, took the shot glass he was holding out to her and downed it. The whiskey burned her throat. Her eyes watered and her cheeks turned pink as its fire spread through her chest.

  “It only hurts for a second,” Eddie said.

  “But does it help, Mr. Gallagher?” she asked in a raspy voice.

  “Yes. And it’s Eddie. I think we’re on a first-name basis now.”

  “We are, aren’t we? I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me,” Jo said, mortified for breaking down in front of him.

  “It’s called grief. And there’s no need to apologize,” Eddie said. The coffee had finished brewing. Eddie pushed the plunger down on the press, poured it contents into the mugs, then handed one to Jo.

  Jo thanked him and wrapped her hands around the hot mug, warming them. She felt as if she’d been gutted, as if there were nothing left inside her. The shocks kept coming, one after another. Tonight’s had overwhelmed her.

  “I could never quite believe his death was an accident,” she said, “Suicide made no sense to me, either—despite what my uncle told me about my father being despondent. I kept asking myself, who could’ve upset my father enough to make him kill himself? But I couldn’t come up with an answer. Murder makes sense, though. It’s the only thing that does, as odd as that must sound.” She took a sip of her coffee, then put the mug down. “I’m going to the police. First thing in the morning,” she said resolutely.

  “I wouldn’t do that. Not until you have evidence,” Eddie said.

  “But isn’t that what the police do?” Jo asked, puzzled. “Gather evidence?”

  “In this city, they gather money. Your uncle paid them off to call the death an accident. They won’t allow anyone to come along after the fact and challenge their findings. If they do, they’ll look like fools.”

  “I could ask Oscar to help me,” Jo said, trying another tack. “He could tell a judge what he told us.”

  “A judge would dismiss him just like Koehler did. All he has to offer is his opinion. I trust it a hundred percent, but I’m probably the only one who does. Other people think he’s crazy. Most people have never heard of forensic medicine, and—” Eddie stopped talking abruptly.

  “And what?” Jo pressed.

  “And most of your evidence is now six feet under. I’m sorry to be blunt, but your father’s body has been decomposing for more than two weeks now.”

  That was not an image Jo wanted to dwell on. “I’ll go to
my uncle. He’ll know what to do,” she said. Then she shook her head. “No, I won’t. Going to the Standard on my own was bad enough. If he finds out where I’ve been tonight—well, you can’t imagine the trouble I’d be in. I’d risk his anger if I had proof, but as you point out, I don’t. And I don’t know how to get any.”

  “I’ll help you get it,” Eddie said.

  “You will?” Jo said, surprised. She was pleased by his change of heart but puzzled by it, too. He’d been noncommittal earlier, on their way to the morgue.

  “We’ll work as a team,” Eddie continued. “I’ll ask around. Drop the names in your father’s agenda here and there. You keep your ears open around your father’s friends and business associates. At dinners, dances, the races.”

  “I don’t attend the races.”

  Eddie rolled his eyes. “At tea parties, then. Whatever you hear, tell me.”

  “I’ll have to stay in town if I’m to find out anything,” Jo said, thinking out loud. “I’ll tell my mother I don’t feel strong enough to return to school. I’ll say I’d like to stay home through the holidays. But, Mr. … But, Eddie …”

  “Yes?”

  “What made you decide to help me?” she asked.

  “I need to make my name, and this story could help me,” he replied.

  Jo understood then—ambition, that was what was behind his change of heart. For a moment, she’d thought it might be because he’d been touched by her plight, but no. She was surprised to find that she felt hurt but quickly told herself she was being silly. Eddie Gallagher’s help was all that mattered, not his motivations.

  “I want a new job,” he explained. “I can’t work at the Standard much longer. Stoatman’s nothing but a puppet. Your family tells him what stories to run and what to kill. I started a story on your father when I thought his death was suicide and Stoatman killed that. But the story’s bigger now. It could really garner some attention.”

  “But Mr. Stoatman would never run it. You just said as much,” Jo said. “My uncle would never allow it.”