These Shallow Graves

by Jennifer Donnelly

  “My goodness, Sally!” A small, red-haired woman stood in the doorway with her hand on her chest. “What a start you gave me!”

  “I … I’m sorry, Mrs. Clarkson,” Sally stammered.

  Jo remembered Sally telling her that Mrs. Clarkson was the Owenses’ current cook.

  “Who’s this?” Mrs. Clarkson asked, eyeing Jo suspiciously.

  “Josie Jones. Sally’s cousin,” Jo said, thinking quickly. “Pleased to meet you, ma’am.”

  “You know you’re not to receive visitors here, Sally,” Mrs. Clarkson said sternly. “I’ll have to inform Mr. Baxter.”

  “I’m not visiting, ma’am. I only came by to give Sally some news. Our grandmother has taken ill. The doctor says she only has a few days left. I had to let her know. She’s Gran’s favorite,” Jo said, surprising herself with how easily the lie came to her lips.

  Mrs. Clarkson softened. “Oh. Well, I suppose that’s all right, then,” she said. “I’m very sorry to hear it.”

  “I’ll be on my way,” Jo said. “Goodbye, Sal. Try not to be too upset.”

  “I’ll try, Josie. Thanks for coming by,” Sally said, glaring.

  A few seconds later, Jo was back on Thirty-Sixth Street. Kinch’s voice was in her head, and his threat to Scully echoed in her mind: There is proof. There are manifests, signed and stamped.

  There are manifests. Not I have the manifests. Because he didn’t have them. But he needed them if he was going to continue extorting money from Van Houten’s partners.

  In her mind’s eye, Jo saw his face again. She saw his fearsome eyes and, though the evening was not a cold one, she shivered. Ever since she’d first spoken with Sally, Jo had been certain Kinch and Stephen Smith were the same man. They’d even used the same method to gain access to the Owenses’ garden. But now, having seen Kinch again, doubts gnawed at her. In the portrait hanging at Van Houten’s, Smith looked like a kind, mild man, and Kinch looked like anything but.

  He’d seen her at her father’s window; he knew who she was. And now he’d seen her at Eleanor’s window. Did he know she was searching for Stephen Smith’s letters, too?

  From the second Jo had laid eyes on Kinch, he’d struck her as a ruthless man. She doubted he would let much stand in the way of what he wanted.

  Not a garden wall.

  And certainly not a girl, either.

  Letter from Mr. Joseph Feen to Mr. Edward Gallagher

  November 3, 1890

  Dear Eddie,

  I searched for Eleanor’s letters in her bedroom but didn’t find them. Kinch appeared in the back garden. I saw him. Which is a positive development. He saw me, too. Which is not.

  JM

  Letter from Miss Edwina Gallagher to

  Miss Josephine Montfort

  November 4, 1890

  Dear Jo,

  You’re kidding me.

  EG

  Letter from Mr. Joseph Feen to Mr. Edward Gallagher

  November 5, 1890

  Dear Eddie,

  I do not “kid,” though on occasion, I jest. This, however, is no such occasion. Meet me at the Met. By the Etruscan pots. Tomorrow at 3 p.m. I shall, as usual, be wearing black.

  JM

  Jo sat on a tufted bench inside the antiquities wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, staring at a cracked clay pot.

  She’d chosen this particular gallery because it was always empty. No one ever came to see the Etruscan pots, and why would they? The Etruscan pots had nothing to say. The Etruscan pots were deadly.

  Jo looked around, recalling the last time she’d been here—five days ago, for the Young Patrons’ Ball. She’d not heard from Bram since, but she had heard he’d been seen chatting with Elizabeth Adams at a party three nights ago. Elizabeth tended to get what she wanted and Jo knew she should try to counter the girl’s efforts; instead, she hoped they succeeded. Jo’s emotions were still contradictory and confusing to her, but one thing was clear—she could not accept a proposal from Bram. Not when she had such strong feelings for Eddie.

  “Where are you?” she whispered impatiently. It was three-fifteen. He was late, and she was bursting to tell him everything she’d learned since she’d last seen him.

  She heard footsteps behind her and her heart quickened. She turned around eagerly, but it was only the guard. A few minutes later, she heard another set of steps, brisk and determined. She turned again, and this time her heart did more than quicken; it nearly leapt out of her chest.

  How can any man be so handsome? she wondered. Eddie could have used a shave, and his too-long hair had only gotten longer. His clothing was rumpled and ink-stained, as always. Yet somehow, an old tweed jacket, a badly knotted necktie, and wrinkled trousers looked better on him than the finest hand-tailored suit did on any other boy. His color was high. He was frowning. He smiled when he saw her, but his eyes retained their intensity.

  “Sorry I’m late. There’s been a development,” he said, sitting down next to her.

  “You can’t sit there!” she whispered. “Sit on the other side of the bench with your back to me. In case someone sees us!”

  Eddie looked around. “But there’s no one here,” he said.

  “Eddie!”

  He moved to the other side of the bench, and his back touched hers as he sat.

  “I have so much to tell you,” Jo said. “About Eleanor Owens and the letters and—”

  “I know you do, but—”

  Jo cut him off. “Kinch wants those letters, Eddie. So he can keep on blackmailing Van Houten,” she said. “We need to determine conclusively that Kinch is Stephen Smith, and I’ve figured out a way to do that: we follow Mr. Scully. Kinch is going to try to get Mr. Scully to pay him more money. If we follow Scully, we’ll be there when Kinch shows up and we can—”

  “Jo, listen to me,” Eddie said urgently. “We can’t follow Scully.”

  She turned to face him, forgetting she wasn’t supposed to. “Why not?” she asked.

  Eddie had turned to her, too. He looked troubled. “Because Richard Scully was found earlier today at Van Houten’s Wharf,” he said.

  “That’s hardly surprising. He works there,” Jo said.

  “He wasn’t found at the office, Jo. He was found in the water. Dead.”

  Jo stared at the dead man lying on his back. His lips were parted, as if in protest.

  “Couldn’t we at least close his mouth?” she asked.

  “Not without breaking his jaw,” Oscar said matter-of-factly. “The muscles are too stiff. Rigor’s set in. It’ll release in a few hours. Don’t worry. The undertaker will pretty him up for his funeral.”

  I hope so, Jo thought, upset to see an old family friend, a man she’d known her entire life, stretched out on a cold ceramic table in the city morgue. The shock of Eddie’s news still hadn’t worn off, and she wondered now, as she looked at the corpse, if Scully’s death had anything to do with her father’s.

  “The cops say Scully drowned,” Eddie had explained, back at the museum. “He was at Van Houten’s working late, and it was foggy when he started for home. They think he became disoriented and fell into the river.”

  Jo had found that impossible to believe and had told him so. “Richard Scully walked to Van Houten’s every day of the week except Sunday,” she’d said. “He could’ve navigated the waterfront blindfolded.”

  “I have a bad feeling about this, Jo. The body’s at the morgue. I’m heading over there to see what Oscar thinks,” Eddie had said.

  He’d tried to dissuade her from accompanying him, but there was no way she wasn’t going. She’d left the museum a few minutes after he did to avoid being seen with him and had hailed a separate cab.

  “Take your notes fast, kids,” Oscar advised now. “The undertaker’s on his way. The cops brought Phillip Montfort and Alvah Beekman here to ID the body. When they finished, Beekman
went to the undertaker’s and Montfort went to notify the family.”

  Poor Uncle Phillip, Jo thought. First he loses my father and now Mr. Scully.

  As Eddie pulled out his notebook, Jo leaned over Richard Scully’s body and peered at it. Scully’s skin was a waxy gray, except for some purple blotches on his face, torso, and the tops of his legs. His eyes were half closed, and the skin around them was badly swollen with blood so dark, it looked black. His fingers were curled into his palms. Silt from the bottom of the East River streaked his forehead. A towel had been placed over his groin by Oscar, when Jo and Eddie arrived, to protect Jo’s sensibilities.

  But Jo found that her sensibilities didn’t need protecting. The last time she’d come to the morgue, she’d been overwhelmed by horror and sadness. Those feelings were still there, but they’d been eclipsed by an intense desire to find out exactly how Richard Scully had ended up in the East River.

  “Any idea when Scully drowned?” Eddie asked. “This morning? Last night?”

  “He didn’t drown,” Oscar said.

  “C’mon, Osk. He was found in the water,” Eddie countered. “The cops fished him out. There were multiple eyewitnesses.”

  “I didn’t say he wasn’t found in the water. I said he didn’t drown.”

  “Are you telling me—”

  “—that Richard Scully was murdered? Yes, I am.”

  Eddie let out a low whistle.

  Jo’s entire body went cold. She’d found it hard to believe that Mr. Scully had simply fallen into the water, but it was difficult to hear the word murder again.

  “How do you know, Oscar?” she asked.

  “To start with, there’s no froth in the airway,” Oscar said, pointing at Scully’s nose and mouth.

  “Froth?” Jo echoed.

  “It’s a mixture of water, air, mucus, and sometimes blood that gets churned into foam as the drowning person tries to breathe. Its absence suggests Scully wasn’t trying to breathe when he went into the water. Which means he was already dead. And then there’s this,” he said, turning the body onto its side.

  Jo grimaced as she saw the gaping laceration on the back of Scully’s head. His skull had been fractured. The bone was cracked like an eggshell.

  “Blunt instrument trauma,” Oscar said. “The weapon was curved, I’d say. A baseball bat. Or a billy club. The blow fractured both the parietal and occipital bones, and caused the periorbital ecchymoses—”

  “In English, Osk,” Eddie said, writing like mad.

  “—the raccoon eyes. Blood from the fracture leaked into the sinuses and the tissue around the sockets and discolored the skin. The man who hit him—”

  “How do you know it was man?” Jo interrupted.

  “Because strength is required to crack a man’s skull wide open. Confidence, too.”

  Jo wondered at that. “One needs confidence to kill?” she asked.

  “It helps,” Oscar said. “Anger gets the job done, too, but it’s messy. This was quick and clean. The killer swung hard and accurately. Men are generally better at the motion of swinging than women because they get more practice. They swing sledgehammers and axes. Cleavers. Scythes.”

  “Did Dr. Koehler see this?” asked Eddie.

  Jo remembered that Dr. Koehler was the coroner, and Oscar’s boss.

  “Yes,” Oscar said, frustration in his voice.

  “And he’s still calling it a drowning?”

  “He says Scully hit his head on a piling as he fell into the water.”

  “Is that possible?” Jo asked.

  Oscar looked at her over the top of his glasses. “Not unless he was in the habit of walking backward.” He ran his hand over Scully’s back. “See this?” He tapped a patch of dark purple. “It’s livor mortis. After the heart stops beating, blood settles in the lowest part of the body and produces this discoloration. The waters around Van Houten’s Wharf aren’t very deep, and the sailor who spotted Scully said he was lying on his back. And as we can see, there is indeed livor on his back.”

  “I thought dead people floated,” Eddie said.

  “That happens later, as the body decomposes. Bacteria inside it release gas, causing it to bloat and rise. Most of the time, a fresh body will sink first. Especially if it’s wearing a heavy wool overcoat like Scully was,” Oscar explained. “The cops who pulled him out of the water corroborate that he was on his back. But”—Oscar eased the body back down on the slab—“we have signs of livor here, too.” He pointed to the faint purple markings on Scully’s right cheek, and on his chest, belly, and legs.

  “Which means?” Eddie prompted.

  “Which means he fell forward when he died and stayed that way for some time. At least half an hour, probably three or four. When the body was put into the river and came to rest on its back, the blood resettled dorsally. The fact that the dorsal livor is well developed indicates that the body remained that way for at least ten hours. Since he was discovered at noon, that means he went into the water sometime around two a.m. Back that out by three hours to allow for the livor to develop on the front of his body, and we get a time of death of approximately eleven p.m.” He prodded Scully’s thigh like a housewife prodding a cut of meat. “The advanced degree of rigor confirms my hypothesis.”

  “You say he was killed at eleven but not dumped in the river until two a.m. … Where was he in the meantime?” Eddie asked.

  “Good question,” Oscar said. “Usually in cases like this—well-dressed gentleman whacked on the back of the head at night—it’s a robbery.”

  “You don’t think this was?” said Jo.

  “I did before I saw the livor on Scully’s front. No robber’s going to hit him, leave him on the street for several hours, then come back and throw him in the river. And then we have the fact that nothing of Scully’s appears to be missing. A robber would’ve taken his billfold, watch, and wedding ring. Probably his coat and shoes, too. It makes no sense. Nor does the river.”

  “The river? Why not?” Eddie asked. He was still scribbling.

  “As I said, the waters around Van Houten’s Wharf are relatively shallow, particularly where Scully was dumped. And with the waterfront being such a busy place, chances are good his body would be seen. Why would a killer who wanted to cover up his crime hide a body in plain sight?”

  Jo knew. And the knowledge frightened her. She looked at Eddie. He’d stopped writing. He knew, too; she could see it.

  “Oscar—” he started to say, but his words were cut off by a booming voice. It was coming from the hallway, outside a set of swinging doors.

  “It’s the boss,” Oscar said. “He doesn’t like me entertaining visitors. Make yourselves scarce.”

  Eddie took Jo’s arm and hurried her out of another set of swinging doors. As soon as they were out in the street, Jo started talking.

  “It’s Kinch, isn’t it? He’s the killer. He didn’t want to hide Scully’s body. He wanted it found,” she said. “Just like my father’s. He wanted both murders to look like accidents. That way, the authorities don’t go looking for the murderer, and he can remain at large and threaten the rest of the partners. He’s going to them one by one.”

  Eddie nodded. “I think you’re right. Back when we eavesdropped on Kinch and Scully, I thought Kinch wouldn’t kill your father because he was going to give him a thousand dollars. But maybe that’s all your father was going to give him. Maybe he balked. Scully certainly did.”

  “So Kinch killed them both. Which is what he’ll do to the rest of the partners if they refuse to meet his demands.”

  “It’s very possible, Jo,” Eddie said solemnly.

  Jo’s fear bloomed into terror. “Dear God,” she said, “what if my uncle’s next?”

  A fine dappled gray pulled Phillip Montfort’s spacious and comfortable brougham up Madison Avenue. The horse was carefully controlled by the ca
rriage’s driver—a man who knew that being too free with the reins resulted in undesirable behavior.

  Inside the carriage, its occupants, en route from Richard Scully’s burial to a funeral reception at his home, just as carefully reined in the emotion they felt at the loss of yet another member of their close-knit circle.

  Except for Jo, who was wringing her hands—hidden inside her muff—in an agony of indecision.

  She needed to tell her uncle about Kinch and the threat he posed, but she knew that by doing so, she might get herself into a great deal of trouble and be forbidden to leave the house, and jeopardizing her ability to pursue her father’s killer was the last thing she wanted to do.

  “I have to tell my uncle. I have to,” she’d said to Eddie two days ago, after they’d left the morgue.

  “What are you going to say when he asks you how you know?” he’d countered. “That you went to the morgue to personally inspect Scully’s corpse?”

  Jo didn’t have an answer. Not then, and not now, but she knew she had to protect her uncle no matter the consequences. If Kinch had taken two lives, he’d have no qualms about taking three.

  “It’s so senseless, Richard’s death,” her aunt Madeleine said, bringing Jo’s mind back to the present. “Being taken in the prime of his life. All because of a misstep.”

  Jo suddenly saw her chance—a way to warn her uncle without revealing what she’d been up to.

  “What if they’re wrong?” she asked, choosing her words carefully so as not to give herself away.

  “What if who’s wrong, dear?” asked her aunt.

  “The police. What if it wasn’t an accident? What if Mr. Scully was murdered?”

  Jo’s aunt looked taken aback. Her mother looked downright shocked. “Josephine Montfort, what a dreadful thing to say!” she scolded. “Where do you get such ideas?”