These Shallow Graves

by Jennifer Donnelly

  “Yes.”

  “But that’s terrible!” Jo exclaimed, outraged. “She’s not a slave, to be bought and sold. We have to stop him, Eddie.”

  “I wish we could.”

  “We could tell the police what he’s doing. They’d arrest him.”

  Eddie shook his head. “No, they wouldn’t. He owns the police. At least, the ones in the Sixth Ward. He pays them to turn a blind eye to his activities.”

  “We could tell them about Madam Esther, then.”

  “She probably pays the cops more than the Tailor does.”

  “Eddie, this isn’t right,” Jo said, upset.

  “No, Jo, it’s not.”

  “How can the police allow such a thing to happen? They’re supposed to protect people!”

  “Fay’s not a person to them. She’s a throwaway girl. One of thousands in this city.”

  “There must be a way to help her,” Jo said, unwilling to accept defeat. “There must be something we can do. I could—”

  “Go to your mother? Your uncle? Tell them you met a pickpocket who’s about to become a prostitute and you’d like to help her out?” Eddie suggested.

  Jo saw the impossibility of the situation. She fell silent, remembering how scared Fay looked when the Tailor talked about Esther. How young she looked underneath all the rouge. Jo remembered something else, too—how Fay had spoken to Eddie, warning him that Jo would be the death of him. Her tone had been familiar and knowing.

  Another question surfaced, demanding an answer—one that had been gnawing at her ever since they’d encountered Mick Walsh. “Eddie, how do you know all these people in the Bend?”

  “Work,” he replied quickly. Too quickly.

  Jo looked at the side of his face. His expression had become unreadable.

  “No, I don’t think so,” she said slowly. “Mick Walsh was surprised to see you. He said it had been a long time. He wouldn’t have said that if you were around here all the time scaring up stories. Fay knows you, too, doesn’t she? Pretty Will. The Tailor, too. He said you’d left this place. He said—”

  “Hey, Jo?” Eddie cut her off. “Just because you’re playing reporter doesn’t mean you are one.” His tone was cold.

  Jo stopped dead. She felt as if he’d slapped her. “That was rotten, Eddie. And mean. And not like you at all,” she said, wounded.

  Eddie laughed, but it had a hollow sound to it. “Not like me?” he echoed. “And what makes you think you know me? You don’t know me, Jo. Not at all.”

  He closed his eyes for a few seconds, then opened them again and looked around. As if he was seeing the Bend in a new way.

  Or perhaps, Jo thought, an old one.

  “You know these people because you used to be one of them.”

  As Jo said the words out loud, she knew them to be true.

  Eddie nodded. “I fought Pretty Will. Played with Fay. Filched Mick’s gin. Stole for the Tailor.”

  He turned his eyes to hers, and she saw why he’d hidden them—they were filled with sadness.

  “This place was my home,” he said.

  “You lived in an apartment here?” Jo asked. “In the Bend?”

  “We weren’t that posh,” Eddie said. “We lived in one room of an apartment.” He nodded at a decrepit-looking building on the corner of Canal and Mott. Its front door hung crookedly from its hinges. “In a building just like that one. My parents and five kids, but two died when they were babies.” He was staring at the building, but Jo felt he was seeing something else—his past.

  “I want to go inside,” she said.

  “No, you don’t.”

  But Jo didn’t listen. She walked up the stoop and pushed the door open. The smell was eye-watering—unwashed bodies, urine, and smoke. A small gas lamp sputtered in the dank, airless hallway, illuminating the crumbling walls. A man was sprawled on the dirty staircase in a drunken stupor. Two thin, dirty children sat on a step above him, prodding him with a stick and laughing.

  Dead cockroaches crunched under Jo’s feet as she made her way to the backmost room. Live ones disappeared into cracks in the walls. The room’s door was partly open, too. In the yellow glow of a kerosene lamp, she could see that it was small, no more than ten feet by twelve. Children lay on the floor sleeping. A thin woman stood by the only window, silhouetted in the moonlight. She was rocking a wailing baby in her arms. A man sat on a chair, his head in his hands. He told the woman to shut the brat up or he would.

  Jo had never seen poverty like this, or people so helpless against it. She turned and walked out of the house, grieved to know that Eddie had suffered such poverty himself, amazed that he’d survived it.

  He was in the shadows of the building, looking up at the night sky, when she rejoined him.

  “Have a good look?” he asked.

  Jo ignored the edge that had crept back into his voice and took his arm. They started walking east again. “This place is why, isn’t it?” she said. “It’s why you became a reporter.”

  Eddie nodded. “I want to tell the stories of the people in that house,” he said. “The ones that never get told. I want to tell the world that these people exist. Nelly Bly’s doing it. Riis and Chambers are doing it. They’re changing things. I want to change things, too. That’s why I want to leave the Standard.”

  Jo realized she had tears in her eyes. She blinked them back, not wanting Eddie to see them. He was proud and would think they were tears of pity, not sorrow.

  “Where are they now? Your brothers and sisters? Your parents?” she asked.

  “I haven’t seen my father since I was five. He left us. My mother died when I was ten. Two days before she passed, she took us—me, my brother, and sister—to Saint Paul’s, a church orphanage. We didn’t want to go, but she said the Tailor wasn’t getting her children. She didn’t know it, but he already had me. Sometimes the only money we had were the coins I’d earned thieving for him. The church took us in. They fed us, educated us, and beat us silly. My sister Eileen lost the hearing in one ear after a beating. She was only eight.”

  Emotion choked off Eddie’s words. He got hold of himself, then said, “She’s a maid for a family in a big house now. They’re good to her. Tom, our brother, he’s in a big house, too,” he added bitterly. “He’s in prison. For manslaughter.”

  “He killed someone?” Jo said, wide-eyed.

  “He went after the priest who beat Eileen,” Eddie explained. “Tom punched him in the face. The priest fell and hit his head on the altar step. Cracked his skull and died. Tom got twenty years. Turns out it’s a life sentence, though. He caught tuberculosis in prison. He doesn’t have long.”

  “Oh, Eddie,” Jo said, her heart breaking for him. “I’m so sorry.”

  He looked at her and she saw more than sadness in his eyes; she saw regret.

  “Why am I telling you all this? I shouldn’t be,” he said. “You know something, Jo? You’re right to be sorry. Not for me, for yourself. And I should be, too. Because I have no right to take you to a place like this—”

  “You didn’t take me. I came here.”

  “—and I have no right to drag you into the Tailor’s lair, or Walsh’s, or my past. I am sorry, Jo. I really am.”

  Jo took his face in her hands and stopped his words with a kiss. “You weren’t sorry a few hours ago. In the museum,” she said.

  “Don’t,” he warned. “This isn’t a joke.”

  She kissed him again. “Are you really sorry? Because I’m not.”

  “More than you’ll ever know.”

  She kissed his cheek, the smooth spot under his ear. “Still sorry?”

  “Jo …”

  She kissed his chin, his neck, and then his mouth once more. “Are you sorry, Eddie?” she whispered.

  He pulled her to him and held her tightly. “No. God, no. But you will be, Jo. And when
that day comes, it’ll kill me.”

  “Where’s the money?” Sally Gibson hissed, opening the servants’ door under the stoop of the Owenses’ brownstone.

  “Lovely to see you, too, Miss Gibson,” Jo said, handing her a ten-dollar note.

  Sally glanced up and down the street. “Come inside. Hurry up!” she said, tugging on Jo’s arm.

  Jo was dressed like a servant. She’d borrowed one of Katie’s work dresses again. A battered straw bonnet covered her head. She and Sally Gibson had arranged this meeting during Sally’s visit to Jo’s home.

  “Come on Sunday afternoon when no one’s home,” Sally had said. “The servants have the day off and the Owenses go to Mrs. Owens’s sister’s for an early supper.”

  Jo had told Eddie of the plan last night as he’d walked her home after their visit to Mulberry Bend. She’d asked Sally to smuggle her into Eleanor’s room, and Sally had agreed. Jo planned to search it from top to bottom, hoping to find the letters and manifests Stephen Smith had sent her.

  “Be careful, Jo. The Owenses aren’t the Tailor. They’ll call the police if they catch you. This is a dangerous game you’re playing,” Eddie had warned.

  A dangerous game? She was playing so many, it made her head spin. And none more dangerous than the one she was playing with him. Yet she couldn’t let him go. After their night in the Bend, after learning about his past and what he’d overcome, her feelings for him had only deepened. The thought of a day without him in it—that was the most frightening thing of all. More frightening than the scar-faced man, or even the Tailor.

  It had taken some doing for Jo to get herself to the Owenses’ house. Her mother had been up and about, so Jo hadn’t been able to simply leave a note and disappear. Instead, she’d told her she had a headache and wanted to go to Central Park to get some fresh air. Katie would accompany her.

  Anna had allowed it and Theakston had offered to call for the carriage, but Jo declined, telling him she planned to walk. She and Katie set off together, but the minute they turned off Gramercy Square, Jo hailed a cab. Once they were inside it, she pulled the shades down and switched clothes with Katie. Then she’d had the driver drop Katie at Saint Mark’s Place, where Katie’s mother lived, and Jo continued on to Murray Hill.

  Katie had instructions to meet her on Thirty-Sixth Street in two hours’ time. They’d hail another cab there, change clothes again, and return home. Jo found the machinations required just to take a trip of a few blocks exhausting.

  “How nice to be Bram or Cousin Rob and go where you wish when you wish,” she’d grumbled to Katie, but Katie hadn’t responded; she’d been too busy counting her money.

  “Don’t make any noise,” Sally said now, leading Jo up the back stairs of the Owenses’ house. “You have to be quiet in case someone returns home early.” She led Jo to a room on the second floor and unlocked the door. “I’ll fetch you in two hours. The cook and butler usually return first, at six-thirty. You have to be out by six,” she said.

  Jo nodded, unnerved by the task ahead of her. She felt like a thief. Eddie’s words came back to her: Sometimes you have to do wrong to do right. Taking a deep breath, she opened the door to Eleanor Owens’s bedroom and stepped inside.

  The air was heavy and sad and carried the faint scent of violets, and Jo felt as if she’d entered a tomb.

  Nothing of Eleanor’s had been touched, it appeared, since the day she’d been taken to Darkbriar. A pair of silk slippers stood by the bed. A pile of books lay on the night table. A clock ticked. Jo moved around the room slowly, painfully aware that she was trespassing.

  The furniture was all of good quality but dated. A faded rug covered the floor. A slipper chair stood in a corner. No dust was to be found anywhere; the maids had obviously been told to keep the room clean but to leave everything as it was.

  Why? Jo wondered. Do Eleanor’s parents come in here for solace? Or to punish themselves?

  The vanity table was covered with silver-backed brushes, perfume bottles, and framed photographs. Most of the photos were of pets—a cat with a ribbon around its neck, two small dogs, a horse. One was of a pretty young woman with delicate features, light hair, and smiling eyes. She was wearing a style of dress that had gone out of fashion years ago. Jo reminded herself that Eleanor had died in 1874. Things had changed. The world had moved on.

  Next to the photo was a jewelry box. Jo lifted its cover. Inside was a string of pearls, several pairs of earrings, some bracelets, and a few brooches. There was also a gold pocket watch, ruined, it appeared, by water.

  A shiver ran up Jo’s spine as she realized she was looking at the watch that had been on Eleanor’s body when it was found. She remembered Sally telling her that, and also saying that the gold pendant Eleanor had worn—one half of a heart, engraved with the word Stephen—and her sapphire-and-diamond engagement ring had likely been stolen.

  Jo turned the watch over. For Eleanor, on her 18th birthday. Love from Mother and Father, read the inscription.

  Her parents loved her, yet they imprisoned her in this room, Jo thought. They hoped to save her reputation, to protect her; instead they destroyed her.

  Eleanor had made her own choices—or tried to. She’d chosen a man. She’d chosen to sleep with him before they were married. She’d chosen to keep their child. She’d broken the rules and she’d paid for it—with her life.

  Jo thought of Eddie and imagined telling her mother about him. She wouldn’t end up locked in her room, but she’d undoubtedly find herself on a train to Winnetka to visit her maiden aunt for a good long time.

  Because that’s what happens to girls who break the rules, she thought.

  The porcelain clock on the mantel chimed. Four-fifteen, its hands said. There was no time to waste. Jo put the watch back in the jewelry box, ready to begin her search.

  The draperies were drawn over the room’s two windows. Wanting more light, Jo walked to one and opened the heavy silks. She glanced into the Owenses’ large back garden as she did. The flowers were dead and the leaves had turned. White marble statues lined the perimeter of the yard. In its center was a bower, presided over by two more statues—one of a man, the other of a woman. Jo couldn’t make out who they were.

  She turned away from the window and faced the room. “Where do I start?” she whispered.

  The bed seemed like a good place. Moving quickly, she ripped the bedcovers, shams, and sheets off it and felt the mattress for lumps but found nothing. Next, she pulled the carpet up, sounded the floorboards, knocked on the baseboards. After that, she removed all the drawers in the vanity and the bureau and felt around inside the frames. She lifted pictures off the wall to see if anything had been taped to their backs. Undeterred, she opened the closet and went through the pockets of the dresses still hanging in it. She tapped the mantel, listening for a hollow place. She went into Eleanor’s bathroom and looked inside the medicine cabinet, under the tub, and behind the toilet.

  And then, nearly two hours after Jo had started her search, she gave up. She’d found nothing. Wherever Eleanor had hidden the letters, it wasn’t in this room.

  They could be anywhere in the house, she thought despondently. She could’ve hidden them inside the piano or the grandfather clock. Up in the attic or behind the coal bin. I need two months to search, not two hours.

  Jo glanced at the mantel clock. It was nearly six. Sally would be coming to fetch her any minute now. She’d been careful to put everything back in its place, but a last glance around the room revealed that she’d forgotten to close the draperies. As she reached for the heavy silk panels, her eyes strayed to the garden, and she froze.

  A man in rough clothes with tattoos on his face was standing in front of the bower. He must’ve sensed her, for he looked up, and his eyes, dark and vengeful, met Jo’s.

  It was Kinch.

  “He was here! I swear it! I saw him!” Jo said, standing by the bower i
n the Owenses’ back garden. “He was right here! A man with black hair and marks on his face. How did he get in?”

  She was breathless. Eager to corner Kinch, she’d run from Eleanor’s room down the back stairs to the kitchen and then outside, with Sally hot on her heels.

  “I don’t know how he got in, and I don’t care,” Sally said. “You have to leave, Miss Montfort. Now.” She looked back at the house anxiously. “It’s past six. If anyone sees you here, I’m done for!”

  Jo took a last look at the bower. She was close enough now to see the two marble figures flanking it: Selene, goddess of the moon, and Helios, the sun god. “How could he have just disappeared?” she asked, bitterly disappointed that he’d gotten away.

  “If you don’t come along, miss, I’ll lock you out here and pretend I have no idea how you got in, and you can explain yourself to Mr. Owens,” Sally threatened. “Or you can fly over the wall, just like your make-believe man did.”

  “That’s it!” Jo exclaimed. “Didn’t you tell me that there’s a door in the garden wall? And that it opens onto an alley?”

  “Yes, but it’s locked. Would you please leave?” Sally said, desperation in her voice.

  But Jo didn’t. Her eyes played over the garden’s alley-side wall, searching for the door. The wall was heavily overgrown with ivy, but in one place, the undersides of several leaves were showing, and the vines were hanging loosely, as if they’d been disturbed. Jo dashed to the spot and immediately saw the door underneath it. Its wood was old and weathered, its hinged rusted. A sliding bolt was fastened to the door, but its keep was missing. Jo looked down and saw it lying on the ground.

  “Kinch kicked it open,” Jo whispered. She turned to Sally. “Didn’t you say that’s how Stephen Smith used to meet with Eleanor? By using this door?”

  At that second, a light went on in the parlor. Sally saw it. She grabbed Jo’s hand and pulled her into the shadows of the house. “Mr. Baxter’s back!” she hissed. “Come on!” She ran into the kitchen, dragging Jo after her. They hurried past the butler’s pantry, to the front of the house and the servants’ entrance. Just as she put her hand on the doorknob, the door was wrenched open.