Veiled in Smoke

by Jocelyn Green

  Flinching, Meg turned away from the elderly gentleman’s naked torso and face. There was no life there at all. It wasn’t Hiram anymore, just a body. His soul had broken its bonds and winged to heaven, where his mind was whole again, his body renewed. This was what she clung to as she steeled herself to examine the sepia-toned images. It was a mercy they weren’t made from a palette of nature’s true colors.

  Still, it felt disrespectful to look upon his undressed form. Helene, she noticed, had closed her eyes, pressing a fist to her mouth. Meg held her breath and looked again. The bullet wound on Hiram’s back was smaller and more symmetrical than the hole on his chest, which was ragged and lopsided.

  “Only a coward would shoot an unarmed old man in the back. It couldn’t possibly be my father.” She was more convinced of that now than ever. “Is there nothing else in the file?”

  Helene spread out the paper and two images, then shuffled them back into the folder. “Nothing.” She pulled her gloves on, as if ready to be done with the affair. Perhaps it was too much for her, to see her former master that way.

  But it wasn’t enough for Meg’s purposes.

  As soon as Mr. Gruber was finished with the man who’d come after her, she caught his attention. “I need to see the witness statements and the medical examiner’s report.”

  “Miss Townsend.” His condescending tone galled her. He looked no older than she was. “You’re taking up time we don’t have. Those other documents you seek are filed away in Evidence, but our new filing system is imperfect, as you can imagine. There is plenty of confusion here since our headquarters burned down, and we’re piecing together loose documents that were saved but are in total disarray. We have more work now than we’ve ever had before and not enough people to do it. This case is closed, and nothing can be gained from you digging through it. Good day to you.”

  “Can you at least tell me the names of the witnesses?” She hated that she sounded like she was begging. Then again, if that was what it took, she was not above it.

  Mr. Gruber made a show of leaning to one side and looking at the long line behind her. Newspapers rattled above voices that thrummed in her ears. “No. I don’t know where the files are, and I never read them myself. Move along.”

  Meg held her ground. “I want to talk to an officer.”

  “No can do. At least not right now. But I’ll take your message, and someone will get back to you when he has time.”

  Which would be never. The mayor had invited Sheridan’s troops to help protect the city, and the police were still overtaxed. No officer would have time—or make time—for her with all that was required of them in the wake of this catastrophe.

  Her hands burned, shooting pain up to her left elbow. It made her irritable, sharp, and focused. “Would you at least have a detective find and question an Otto Schneider as a potential suspect for Hiram Sloane’s murder? He has a motive. Stephen Townsend did not.”

  “Potential suspect? In a closed case?” Mr. Gruber’s laugh was disbelieving. “Not on your—” He frowned, gaze darting to one side. “Hang on, I know that name.” He shuffled papers on his desk until at last he plucked up a list of names.

  “Here he is.” He pointed to Schneider’s name halfway down the page. “Already in prison, ladies, since October 1. Looks like your suspect has an alibi. And if you don’t leave now, I’ll call an officer to escort you from the premises.”

  Blood rushed to Meg’s cheeks, while the image of McNab and O’Hara dragging her father away filled her mind. “That won’t be necessary.”

  Helene thanked Mr. Gruber for his time while Meg struggled to regain her composure. She’d come here for answers and was leaving with more questions instead. The police weren’t going to help her, that much was clear. If she wanted to get to the bottom of this, she was on her own.

  Chapter Twelve

  SUNDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1871

  Everything had changed since last Sunday. And yet here, inside Nate’s stepsister’s home just west of Chicago, it seemed like nothing had. The parlor still smelled faintly of lemon oil, Edith still served pot roast on the same mismatched china, and her two sons still napped peacefully, as if all was right with the world. It was an oasis of normalcy.

  “Eat,” Edith urged him, though he’d already had some of everything. “You look as though you haven’t in a week.” She wasn’t too far from the truth.

  Sundays had always been a relief to Nate. As a reporter, his hours were irregular, invading evenings and Saturdays, since news was no respecter of clock or calendar. Sundays were the one day of the week with a routine he could count on. Church in the morning and then time with family. For the last four years, that meant sharing a meal with Edith and Frank. Their home was modest but clean and without frills, since the wedding had been small and Edith had not had a mother to pass down the usual trappings of keeping house. The only difference was that now that Harriet and Andrew were gone, there were two fewer place settings than before.

  “I still don’t understand why you won’t stay with us for a while,” Edith said. “At least until the cost of rent sinks back to pre-fire rates. We’ve talked about it, haven’t we, Frank?” She looked to her husband, but having just taken a bite, he wasn’t ready to speak.

  Just as well. “I appreciate the offer, but I need to stay in the city, close to the news and the Tribune.” Nate had already explained this on Tuesday, when he’d paid a brief visit to tell them he was safe.

  “Of course.” Frank Novak helped himself to another slice of roast. A pharmacist by trade, he cut his meat with the precision required by his job. The starched white collar, meticulously trimmed mustache, pomaded black hair, and perfectly tied cravat added to the impression of one who valued neatness, even if his frock coat had worn a little thin at the elbows. “I don’t blame you, Nate. You’ve earned the right to live as a bachelor for the first time in, well, the first time ever. No one to answer to, come and go as you please . . .”

  “Well, listen to you! If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were jealous,” Edith teased.

  “Some days more than others.” Frank winked at her and squeezed her shoulder, and she swatted him away with good humor. He turned back to Nate. “I’ll bet you’re grateful to be shed of family responsibilities, eh? Especially now. You could really make a name for yourself with the stories out there waiting to be written.”

  Nate swallowed a bite of clove- and cinnamon-spiced sweet potatoes. “I do feel more at ease about working long or odd hours.” During the last several years, he’d been resigned to but not comfortable with the time he was away from his stepsiblings. Andrew, in particular, had been prone to trouble.

  “By the way, I wrote to Harriet about your experience with the fire to let her know you’re safe, but I’m sure she’d appreciate hearing from you personally.” Edith sipped her coffee. “I don’t have an address for Andrew, or I’d ask you to write him too.”

  “I’ve written to Harriet.” Nate removed his spectacles, rubbed them clean with a corner of his linen napkin, and replaced them. “Andrew knows where to reach both of us.”

  Frank leaned back in his chair and narrowed his gaze across the table at Nate. “Don’t be too hard on yourself where Andrew is concerned. You did your best with your family, which was far more than most young men would have done. Edith and Harriet turned out well enough. Andrew just . . .”

  “Needed a father,” Nate finished for him. “And I wasn’t it.” In fact, Andrew liked to point to their differing surnames—he was a Gibson, Nate was a Pierce—and say Nate wasn’t even his brother. No shared blood at all.

  “Who knows what Andrew needed, or what he needs still?” Edith said quietly. Sighing, she looked out the window, her face pale. “Whatever it is, maybe he’ll find it out west. He was always so independent.”

  True enough. Probably because he didn’t trust Nate would really look out for them. When Andrew was six years old, he’d stolen food, not believing Nate would return from work in time for dinner to
feed them all himself. Shocked and embarrassed, Nate had marched Andrew back to the grocer to confess and perform a few tasks until the grocer was satisfied the debt had been paid. “I said I would take care of you,” Nate had scolded him. “Why didn’t you believe me?”

  The irony of it all dawned on him too late, for that was the week he’d submitted his story on the carriages that were breaking down all over the city. Nate had traced all the faulty carriages back to Martin Sullivan’s shop. He’d quoted people who claimed the Irishman had sabotaged the axles in order to hurt upper-class patrons. Nate also quoted those who claimed it wasn’t sabotage but the incompetence inherent among the Irish. His characterization of Sullivan made him seem both slow and menacing to match his accusers’ descriptions, knowing full well this was what the public expected. What they wanted.

  By the time Nate learned that Sullivan’s competitor had altered the carriages after they’d been sold in order to run him out of business, it was too late. Thanks to Nate’s story, the devious plan had worked. After Sullivan’s business failed, he worked at the docks until a back injury made that impossible too.

  Little Andrew had stolen bread and apples because he didn’t believe Nate would meet his needs, but Nate had stolen a man’s reputation because he hadn’t trusted God would provide a job without him resorting to dishonesty. A sin he’d vowed never to repeat. This was why he was so adamant with his editor about facts, enough facts, and only the facts.

  He drained the last of his coffee. “I wasn’t always the best example for Andrew.”

  Edith covered a yawn and shook her head. “Don’t tell me this is about Martin Sullivan again. Do you still keep tabs on him?”

  A rueful smile on his face, Nate spun sideways on his chair and stretched out a leg, exposing an old but shining shoe beneath his trousers. The fifty-something-year-old Sullivan spent his days bent over other men’s feet, polishing shoes for a pittance.

  She arched an eyebrow. “And do you still go without lunch so you can tip him a wildly generous amount?”

  As often as he could. Two years, maybe three, had passed between the publication of Nate’s story and the day he found Sullivan polishing shoes the first time. Martin hadn’t recognized Nate, and Nate hadn’t reintroduced himself.

  “Business is booming for him at the edge of the burned district. Folks go in to satisfy their curiosity, and by the time they’re done, their shoes are covered in dust.”

  The sun shifted, casting a ray into Edith’s brown eyes. She squinted, and Frank moved to the window to pull the shade. “And do you also keep tabs on the young women with whom you fled the fire?” he asked. “Townsend, correct? We saw the article about the father’s arrest.”

  Nate rubbed the back of his neck. “Ah. Count that as another article without all the facts,” he muttered. “But no, I haven’t seen her.” Meg’s face came to mind, and he wondered how she fared with her injuries. “I mean, them. I haven’t seen the Townsend sisters since early Tuesday morning.”

  He had seen them to safety, and that was that. Especially since his editor had forbidden him to pursue the sad story of Stephen Townsend. He sympathized, but he wasn’t ready to lose his job.

  “Quite right.” Frank took off his frock coat now that the meal was over. “You’ve done your part.”

  The sounds of the baby waking from his nap carried from the hallway. Edith excused herself and returned moments later with Henry on her hip, his face flushed and creased from sleep. He thrust a dimpled hand into her pecan brown hair, the very shade of his own, and pulled a strand free to rub between his fingers and his thumb. Tommy straggled behind her, rubbing a chubby fist to his eyes, his black hair and lashes a reflection of his father’s.

  “Hey there, Tiger.” Nate scooped up the drowsy two-year-old and pushed the hair back from Tommy’s brow, then thought of his own unwieldy cowlicks. Nate looked nothing like Edith or her children. He bore no resemblance to anyone. What would it be like to look into someone’s face—a parent, a sibling, a child—and see a reflection of one’s own?

  Frank took Henry and lifted him high in the air, much to the baby’s laughing delight, and Edith’s. Nate wondered how it would feel to hang the lights behind someone’s eyes the way Frank did for Edith. He was thirty years old and still didn’t know.

  Tommy squirmed and reached for his mother. Nate passed the boy to Edith, then folded his empty arms. Belonging and responsibility were two sides of the same coin. He could not have one without the other. And the only person he was responsible for now was himself.

  Chapter Thirteen

  MONDAY, OCTOBER 16, 1871

  Another door slammed in Meg’s face. She remained on Hiram’s neighbor’s front porch until the brass knocker stilled and she could see her reflection in its polished plate. She didn’t look like a murderer’s daughter, but that was exactly what the lady of the house had seen.

  Thunder groaned in the distance. Her nose and toes tingling from the cold, she turned and headed down the stone stairway, acknowledging a statue of a lion on her way. “Good kitty,” she murmured.

  A patrolling soldier lifted a quizzical eyebrow at her as she let herself through the iron gate to return to the sidewalk.

  “Good afternoon,” he said, and she merely nodded, unwilling to engage him in conversation.

  The soldiers’ presence in the neighborhood allowed her to feel perfectly safe going up and down the block alone. But she had no desire to explain herself to him. Or to anyone else today, for that matter.

  All she had wanted was to find out if any neighbors had seen anything unusual around Hiram’s house the night of the fire, and if they knew who might have wished him ill. She’d knocked on about a dozen doors today after lunch and had no new information to show for it. No, they couldn’t think who would want to hurt Mr. Sloane. No, they didn’t see him leave the night of October 8, and they didn’t see anyone suspicious come to the house. Then there were those, like the neighbor whose house she had just left, who realized she was the daughter of the alleged murderer—a lunatic, no less—and couldn’t get rid of her fast enough.

  It was time to be done questioning neighbors for now. She had spoken with Eli today too, checking on Mr. Davenport’s alibi. But there’d been nothing in what he told her to cast doubt on the young man. According to Eli, Jasper Davenport had been vigilant and dogged about finding Hiram as they searched the city together for hours on end.

  Her footsteps fell almost silently on mats of slick wet leaves. She tried flexing her hands in their bindings, hidden in the pockets of her cloak. The pain had gradually receded from its original excruciating intensity, but she required assistance to dress, to wash her hair in boiled and cooled lake water, and to change her bandages, a task Sylvie faithfully performed.

  A light rain pattered the branches overhead, then dripped onto her hat and shoulders, yet her thoughts remained with her injuries. Meg tried to avoid drawing conclusions based on what she saw during her daily dressing changes. Even Dr. Gilbert, whom she had seen at the free clinic on Saturday after her errand to the police station, had not pronounced a definitive judgment. If she listened to her own fears, she would think her hands would never serve her again the way they once had. She would think that the right hand, her dominant hand, felt like a dead thing because it was a dead thing, curling in on itself like a drying leaf. One could not paint with a dead and deformed hand. One could barely do anything with it.

  At least her left hand had healed enough that the wrappings covered only her thumb and palm, leaving the tops of her fingers free. That was something. All she could do was wait for further healing and do what she could in the meantime for the family she’d promised to take care of.

  That was precious little.

  Sylvie had been the one to inventory their possessions. There had been no need to write the insurance company, however, since it was reported in the Tribune that it was one of many bankrupted by the fire. The Townsends, along with tens of thousands of others, would get nothing for thei
r losses.

  It did not take any skill to stand in line, however, so that was how Meg had spent the morning. As soon as she’d read that the Relief and Aid Society was offering a limited number of free temporary houses, she’d gone to apply for one. At least she hadn’t been rained on then.

  Rounding the corner, Meg quickened her pace until she reached Hiram’s house, climbed the steps, and let herself in. After Kirstin came to help her take off her cloak and hat, the young maid returned to the kitchen and Meg made her way to the library, ready to think about something other than herself and her own circumstances.

  It was a masculine room with an ebonized cherry wood mantel for the fireplace, gold curtains at the windows, and brightly painted canvas panels on the ceiling. After perusing the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, Meg selected a volume she’d sold to Hiram herself several years ago: The Life of Charlotte Brontë, written by Charlotte’s friend Elizabeth Gaskell. The spine showed no evidence of use. The boxed set of Brontë novels appeared similarly untouched. Hiram must have purchased them as a kindness.

  Meg took the familiar book about Charlotte’s life to the study table and fumbled it open. She felt more of a kinship with Charlotte than with any of the characters she or her sisters had invented. Charlotte had spent years at home taking care of her ailing father, who slept with a loaded pistol beneath his pillow. She’d wanted to be an artist, but her eyesight was damaged. She only drew or wrote when she’d completed her daily duties at home and for her father, at least until she was required to nurse her dying sisters as well.

  Duty had been Charlotte’s byword, as it was Meg’s. Charlotte published in order to support her family. Meg painted for the same reason. Everything came back to family. So while Meg admired Madame LeBrun for painting Marie Antoinette when she was Meg’s age, she modeled her priorities after Charlotte Brontë’s: family above all else.