These Shallow Graves

by Jennifer Donnelly

  How many lives had he and her uncle already stolen when that picture was taken? How many people had they enslaved? Wives and husbands torn apart. Children ripped from their parents’ arms. She thought about another stolen child—Fay. She remembered the expression on her face, and on Eleanor’s, when they realized they were mother and daughter. Sixteen long years it had taken Eleanor Owens to find her daughter. Poor Stephen Smith never did.

  “Yes, Win,” Jo finally said. “I’m sure.”

  Bram stepped forward. “My God, Jo, don’t do this,” he said. “There must be another way.”

  “There’s only one right way, though,” Jo said. She gave him a smile, one made up of courage, fear, and loss all mixed together. She was finally stepping off that cliff.

  “You’ll destroy your entire family,” he said.

  “My uncle destroyed my family. My father, too. Years ago in Zanzibar.”

  She turned to Eddie then. He’d finished writing. He’d closed his notebook. She knew that what he had on those pages would ruin her life, and launch his. It was a huge scoop and would surely land him the job he wanted.

  “I don’t have to, Jo,” he said, reading her mind. “Somebody else can report this one.”

  Jo shook her head. “I thanked you when I first met you. Thank you again, Eddie.”

  “For what? Landing you in a nuthouse? And then a jail cell?” he joked, walking up to the bars of her cell.

  “For helping me find the truth.”

  Eddie grasped one of the cold iron bars. “The truth costs, Jo. Dearly,” he said. “I hope you know that.”

  She nodded, and covered his hand with her own. For an instant, their fingers entwined. For an instant, she’d never doubted him. She’d never faltered. She’d never said yes to Bram. For an instant, he was hers again.

  “Lies cost more,” she said regretfully.

  She stepped back from the bars and with a sad smile said, “Go, Eddie. Hurry. Before the rest of Park Row gets wind of it. You finally have your story.”

  Gramercy Square

  March 3, 1891

  Jo moved through the empty rooms of her house one by one, feeling every bit as hollow as they were.

  She ran a hand over the marble mantel in her dining room and traced a shadow on the wallpaper where a picture had hung. Her boot heels echoed on the bare wood floors.

  She’d had so many happy times in this house—Christmases, birthday parties, fancy dinners. She could almost hear her father’s voice welcoming family and friends.

  Those times were gone now, as he was, never to return.

  The furniture had been auctioned off. The house had been sold. A family from Philadelphia had bought it. The father was a new sort of man, one who owned a typewriter factory. He would make an unusual addition to Gramercy Square.

  The Standard had been sold, too. Eddie now worked at the Tribune. He’d been hired for his scoop on the sensational Van Houten story. Almost overnight, he’d become the most widely read reporter in New York. Jo was happy for him. She’d written to tell him so. She hadn’t seen him since the trial. He was very busy now. At least, that was what he said.

  Jo was waiting to say goodbye to her mother. Anna was leaving for Winnetka this afternoon, to live near her sister.

  “It’s far away from New York,” she’d said after she’d announced her plan to Jo, “but not far enough, I fear. Nowhere is far enough. Not after all that has happened.”

  The Montforts were no more. They no longer existed. Not to anyone, as Grandmama would say, who mattered. They existed for the rest of New York, though. Their story had been on the front page of every city paper for the last three months—ever since the day Jo had walked out of the Tombs.

  Early that morning, Win Choate had traveled to Gramercy Square to inform Anna Montfort what had happened at Darkbriar. As soon as Anna had recovered from the shock, she’d rescinded the papers she’d signed to have Jo committed. At the arraignment for Jo, Fay, and Eleanor, the judge had charged Fay with shooting Phillip Montfort and Francis Mallon. Eleanor had been charged with assault, for knocking out Darkbriar’s watchman, as well as vandalizing the asylum. No charges were leveled against Jo. Her assault on Francis Mallon was seen as self-defense. Win had persuaded a judge to set bail for all three women, and Anna had paid not only Jo’s bail, but Fay’s and Eleanor’s.

  “We’re jumping bail, me and Eleanor,” Fay had whispered to Jo as they’d left the courtroom. She was terrified that the charges against her would stick and she’d be sent to prison. She didn’t trust the cops or the courts to give her a fair shake. “I’ll pay you back the bail money someday. I swear it,” she’d said.

  “You’ll do no such thing,” Jo had told her. “Van Houten owes you and Eleanor that money. That, and a great deal more. Go now. Hurry. And for God’s sake, Fay, be careful.”

  As Fay and Eleanor had dropped out of sight, Jo found herself thrust directly into the spotlight.

  With Win Choate at her side, she’d leveled her own charges. She accused her uncle and Francis Mallon of a host of crimes, including slave trading, insurance fraud, battery, kidnapping, attempted murder, and murder.

  A grand jury had been convened, and its members had listened to testimony from Jo, Eddie, and several others involved in the case. Win Choate thought Eddie might try to invoke his First Amendment rights as a member of the press, and refuse to testify, but he didn’t. He’d told the jury everything he’d seen, heard, and done in connection with the case. His account had corroborated Jo’s and had been instrumental in obtaining indictments against both Phillip Montfort and Francis Mallon.

  Newsrooms had erupted when the charges were made public. Reporters had camped out at the courthouse and on the steps to the Montfort home. Jo’s picture, descriptions of her gestures, her clothing, even details of how she wore her hair, were all anyone talked about.

  New Yorkers had devoured every detail of the story. Every man in the street knew how the Owenses had refused to believe their daughter was alive, and had tried to bar the police from entering their home. Win had had a search warrant issued, and the mysterious manifests had been found—right where Jo thought they’d be. They’d been wrapped up well and protected from weather, and they clearly detailed Van Houten’s slave trading.

  Because of them, Phillip Montfort had been doomed in the court of public opinion even before his actual trial had begun. Throughout the trial, Phillip’s lawyer, John Newcomb, maintained that his client was innocent of all charges. Mallon, however, folded on the second day.

  On that morning, the prosecution called two eyewitnesses—a sailor and a barkeep—who’d come forth after reading Eddie’s reports. Both men swore under oath that they’d seen Mallon at Van Houten’s Wharf with Scully the night of Scully’s death. Scared, Mallon turned on Montfort and made a full confession. He told the court that Montfort had paid him to kill Richard Scully, Alvah Beekman, and Stephen Smith, and to assault Edward Gallagher and Josephine Montfort. Mallon insisted he hadn’t killed Charles Montfort, however—Phillip Montfort had done that himself.

  While on the stand, Mallon explained how his and Montfort’s relationship had begun—and how Eleanor Owens’s child had ended up with Jacob Beckett, a denizen of Mulberry Bend who was also known as the Tailor.

  Montfort, Mallon said, had first approached him in 1874, during a trip home from Zanzibar. He’d returned to New York, ostensibly to visit his wife, young son, and baby daughter, but the trip’s real purpose was to deal with Eleanor Owens. He knew she was Smith’s fiancée, and that Smith had sent her proof of the firm’s slave trading.

  Mallon explained that a private detective had done some sleuthing for Phillip and had found out that Eleanor was in Darkbriar and why. The detective put Mallon, who admitted that he was always looking for a way to make a few extra dollars, in touch with Phillip Montfort.

  Phillip, convinced that Eleanor and her chil
d posed a threat, asked Mallon to take care of them. Mallon told Phillip the child was supposed to go to an orphanage, but that wasn’t good enough for Phillip. He worried that she might one day try to find out who her real parents were and what had happened to them, and he didn’t want that.

  Mallon found that he could not kill a child, but he still wanted Phillip’s money. So with the help of a crooked undertaker, he procured a dead infant and switched it with Eleanor’s baby. The asylum’s overworked doctor merely glanced at the baby, signed the death certificate, and continued on his rounds. The switched baby was buried at Darkbriar, but Eleanor was never told her child had died. The doctor thought her too fragile to bear such hard news, so he instructed Mallon to tell her that the baby had been taken to an orphanage, where it would find a loving home.

  Mallon, meanwhile had spirited the child, along with the basket of things Eleanor had made for it, out of Darkbriar and sold her to the Tailor—with a warning that she must never learn the truth of her parentage. Neither Mallon nor the Tailor had any idea that the little rag doll tucked into the baby’s basket contained her mother’s engagement ring.

  A subpoena had been issued to the Tailor to answer Mallon’s accusation. He’d objected but had been hauled into court anyway. There, he’d denied buying Fay and claimed that he’d found her abandoned in a tenement stairwell. He’d insisted he’d raised her with great care, loved her as if she were his own, and wanted her found and returned home to him.

  Oscar Rubin had also been called to testify. He stated that the injuries on all four dead men were inconsistent with the official reports of their deaths, and then explained why to the jurors. Newcomb had objected to almost everything Oscar said, but to everyone’s surprise, the judge had overruled him. Both judge and jury were fascinated by Oscar’s compelling arguments and by the science behind them.

  Eddie had followed Oscar to the stand and had repeated for the jury everything he’d told the grand jury. The late Charles Montfort’s household staff had been called, as well as Van Houten partners Asa Tuller and John Brevoort; Jackie Shaw; Samuel and Lavinia Owens; Sally Gibson; Simeon Flynn, Darkbriar’s gravedigger; Ada Williams, one of its matrons; Alfred Black, its watchman; Lucy Byrne, a young woman in the employ of Della McEvoy; and various police officers who’d either arrested Jo, Fay, Eleanor, and Kinch or who’d been involved in the investigations of the death of Charles Montfort, Richard Scully, and Alvah Beekman. The Bonaventure’s manifests had been shown to the jury, as well as Charles Montfort’s agenda and the bullet Jo had found on the floor of her father’s study.

  When Jo herself had finally taken the stand, a hush had fallen over the courtroom. The reporters present had strained to hear her every word. After all, what she said could well send her own uncle to death row. Newcomb had done his best to trip Jo up during his cross-examination, but he’d failed. Jo had recounted the events that followed her father’s death clearly and with conviction, and it had been obvious to everyone in the courtroom that the jury believed her.

  Though the case against Phillip Montfort and Francis Mallon had been built entirely on circumstantial evidence, by the time closing arguments had begun, all of New York had been certain both defendants would be convicted. And they almost were, but at the last moment, John Newcomb pulled off a shocking surprise.

  The very morning that the prosecution was scheduled to begin its closing arguments, Newcomb had stunned the jury by declaring that Phillip Montfort had confessed to killing his brother.

  The courtroom had erupted into such chaos that the judge broke a gavel trying to restore order. When everyone had finally settled down, Newcomb stated that the night before, a highly agitated Phillip Montfort had summoned him to the Tombs and told him that he had to unburden himself. He’d shot his brother, yes, but it had been a terrible accident.

  Phillip Montfort, Newcomb said, had been driven insane by remorse over Van Houten’s slave trading. He’d started having visions of hell, and believed he would go there because of his crimes. He started to carry his gun with him everywhere he went. One night, he went to visit Charles, desperate to unburden himself. While he was there, he’d became certain that Charles himself was the devil. In a fit of terror, he’d pulled out his gun, and somehow it had gone off. Scared that another demon would come after him for killing his own brother, Phillip made the death look like a suicide, hid behind the study’s curtains, and later escaped.

  Newcomb had then informed the court that upon hearing Montfort’s confession, he’d sent for a doctor. The doctor had examined Montfort and had declared him to be paranoid, delusional, and completely unfit to stand trial.

  Newcomb had then produced the doctor, who repeated his diagnosis for the court. Court was adjourned and a second doctor was summoned. He confirmed the first doctor’s findings, and the next day, Phillip Montfort was on his way to the Asylum for Insane Criminals in Auburn. .The newspapers had all opined that the doctors were paid off by Newcomb, but nothing could be proved.

  Jo hadn’t accepted her uncle’s claim that the shooting was an accident. He’d tried to get her to believe the very same thing at Darkbriar. Nor had she believed he was mentally unsound. Newcomb had made a bold last-ditch effort to save her uncle’s neck, and it had worked. Jo would have felt no happiness had her uncle received the death penalty, and she felt no anger at the turn of events—just a deep, abiding grief. Her father was dead. Now her uncle was, too. Dead to her, at least. And had been ever since their carriage ride to Darkbriar.

  The papers were disappointed that Montfort had escaped the electric chair—the state’s recently adopted means of dispatching death row inmates—but most agreed that there was poetic justice in his ending up in an asylum after he’d tried to force his niece into one.

  A day after Phillip Montfort was packed off to Auburn, Francis Mallon was convicted of two counts of battery and three counts of murder in the first degree. The jury felt that the prosecution had not proven that he’d sold Eleanor Owens’s baby to Jacob Beckett, and acquitted him of the kidnapping charge. He was sentenced to death, but the judge commuted the sentence to life in prison in consideration of his testimony against Montfort.

  And then the whole ugly thing was over, and Jo was left to cope with the aftermath. As Bram predicted, she destroyed not only Phillip, but her entire family. The old guard no longer received the Montforts. Madeleine, Caroline, and Robert had moved to Oregon. Asa Tuller and John Brevoort were shunned for their participation in the slave trade and, together with their families, also left New York.

  Anna had taken it all very hard, but she weathered her losses with courage and grace. Phillip Montfort, a man she’d loved and trusted, had killed her husband. That same husband had been a party to slave trading. And she’d nearly committed her own child to a madhouse—an act for which she had apologized to Jo deeply and genuinely.

  All that Charles had procured for the family was sold and the monies donated to various charities. The things Jo’s mother had brought to the marriage—the Gramercy Square town house, jewels, and many fine heirlooms—were also sold. Anna planned to live on the proceeds.

  Anna had also set up an investment fund for Jo, one that would give her about five hundred dollars a month. It was nowhere near the money Jo would have had at her disposal if she’d said nothing, done nothing, and married Bram, but it would keep her.

  Throughout the ordeal, Jo had gained a new appreciation for her mother. She admired her toughness, her resilience, and her insistence on doing not just what was required, but what was right. Breeding, Grandmama Aldrich would have called it. Jo liked the word character better.

  “Josephine!” Anna called out now.

  She’d just come downstairs and was full of last-minute instructions. The plan was for her to go to Winnetka ahead of Jo and ready their new home. It was a small, modest house, but it was in the best neighborhood. Jo would stay behind for a week to make sure their last few pieces of furniture we
re taken to the auction house and that any remaining notes were paid.

  There was no question of her returning to Miss Sparkwell’s. She’d received a letter from the headmistress saying that in light of the tragic death of her father, and other subsequent events, it might be better for Jo, who must be in a very fragile state, to not return to school this year. Or ever, Jo thought, reading between Miss Sparkwell’s lines.

  “You’ll need to take the papers to the lawyer’s office, and don’t forget to bring the keys to the new owners. They’re staying at—”

  “The Fifth Avenue Hotel! You told me five times, Mama!” Jo protested.

  Anna buttoned her fur coat up around her neck. “Do you have your own train tickets? Yours and Katie’s?” she asked.

  “Yes, Mama.” Katie was to accompany Jo to Winnetka as her chaperone.

  “Make sure you lock the doors at night and leave no lamps burning. Mr. Theakston is no longer here to check.”

  They’d let him go last week.

  “I will. Your cab is here,” Jo said. “If you don’t leave now, you’ll miss your train.”

  Anna kissed Jo, bade her goodbye, and headed for the door. She stopped as she reached it, however, and turned around one last time.

  “I am very sorry, Josephine,” she said with a voice full of feeling.

  “For what?” Jo asked, unused to such a tone from her mother.

  “For all the things you’ve lost,” Anna replied. And then, in a rare display of emotion, she walked back to Jo, took her face in her hands, and kissed her again. “But you are a different sort of girl. Not at all what I expected you to be. And this is a different sort of time. And so I am hopeful for all the things you may yet find.”