by Kat Ross
“It’s too early to form an opinion,” I said. “We must see his rooms, and then we must learn everything about the Rickard killing, including those facts that have not been published in the papers.”
“And how are we going to do that?”
“I’m working on it.” I returned to the window seat and flopped down, hoping vainly for a breeze. “I suppose you believe Straker was possessed by some sort of demonic entity that turned him into a homicidal maniac.”
“Well, it did cross my mind,” John replied. “If you want to work for the S.P.R., you’d better open yours a little.”
The S.P.R., or Society for Psychical Research, had been founded in 1882 to investigate paranormal phenomena. Its stated mission was “to approach these varied problems without prejudice or prepossession of any kind, and in the same spirit of exact and unimpassioned enquiry which has enabled science to solve so many problems, once not less obscure nor less hotly debated.”
In other words, its membership was comprised of both adamant skeptics, like myself, and fervent believers, like John. My Uncle Arthur had just joined the year before. He tended toward the latter, and was also a member of the venerable Ghost Club, which, unlike the S.P.R., subscribed wholeheartedly to the occult.
Both entities were based in London, but the Society had agents across the Atlantic. They investigated apparitions, clairvoyance, precognitive dreams, thought-reading, hauntings, mesmerism and more or less anything that seemed to defy the laws of known science. Much of it involved exposing clever fakes. The job required wit, subtlety, nerves of steel, and a firm grip on sanity. John knew I wanted nothing more in life than to work for them someday. But first I would have to prove I had what it takes.
And this case could be just the way to do it.
“I’m not jumping to any conclusions,” I said, reciting Myrtle’s mantra. “One must never make the facts fit the theory but rather vice versa. Clearly, Straker had been under a great deal of pressure for a long time. It’s hardly unthinkable that he snapped. He could easily have gone back to Rickard’s flat that night. But why?”
John shrugged. “Revenge? Brady said he seemed to blame her for his predicament.”
“Maybe. The violent nature of the attack does seem personal. Whoever the killer was, they were full of rage.” I picked up the World and scanned its pages. “Oh, Edward’s in the society column again for some stunt at Saratoga Springs. They crowned him King of the Dudes.”
“Again?” John asked, rolling his eyes.
“Again.” The first occasion had been during the height of the March blizzard, when he strolled into a bar wearing patent leather boots that went up to his hips. “Apparently, he changed clothes forty times in a single day at the racetrack. That’s got to be a new record, even for Edward.”
I tossed the article to John and quickly sorted through the rest of the papers. The New York Times complained of “filthy Europeans” taking the garment factory jobs of “American working girls” (who themselves earned about three dollars a week), while on the same page it reported that a tenement fire had killed a family of eight.
The Herald devoted half a page to a grocer who had murdered his partner and chopped the body up, stuffed the pieces into a set of luggage, and dumped them at Grand Central Depot.
I returned to the New York World, which seemed to have the heaviest coverage of the Rickard killing, when my eye caught on a familiar byline and inspiration struck. “Paper and ink, John! I need to send a message.”
I dashed off a note and left it for Connor, a street urchin in my sister’s employ. A boy of somewhere between eight and eleven (I think even he was unsure), Connor was the nominal leader of the fearsome-sounding Bank Street Butchers, although in reality they were far tamer than the other gangs that roamed the city’s streets, limiting their activities mainly to pickpocketing the elderly and infirm.
Connor would be an invaluable ally, I decided. He was a perfect mercenary, and I doubted he would care about my impersonation as long as I paid him more than Myrtle did.
“Who’s that to?” John said, trying to read over my shoulder.
“You’ll see,” I said, swatting him away. “Now, I think it’s time we went to 91 Leonard Street. Our client will be waiting.”
We hailed a hansom cab on Fifth Avenue and proceeded three blocks downtown to Washington Square Park, where we turned east toward Broadway, passing the elegant marble-fronted St. Nicholas Hotel and Theatre Comique. It was still morning, so the great mass of streetcars and wagons and horses and omnibuses was mostly flowing south. Every now and then, the whole thing would become hopelessly tangled up, and police would rush in to redirect traffic around whatever obstacle had presented itself. If you wished to cross the avenue on foot during rush hour, that was your chance to do it. Otherwise, it was a certain suicide mission.
At the intersection of Broadway and White, just a few short blocks from City Hall, we turned left towards Baxter Street. It is a true cliché that only in New York can one go from opulence and bustle to pure, undiluted misery in a matter of seconds. The buildings seemed to sag and lean against each other in weariness, as though moments away from collapsing completely. In the August heat, the stench was indescribable. This was the heart of the Five Points, whose gloomy, crooked streets housed thousands of families, mostly blacks and Irish immigrants. I asked the driver to slow as we passed the former dwelling place of Becky Rickard. It was above a hole-in-the-wall “distillery” that was already open for business at this early hour. The building was a two-story wooden shanty, and a “room to let” sign had already been placed in the upstairs window.
“We should find out if someone requested the body, or if she was sent to Potter’s Field,” John said.
Those whose families couldn’t afford a burial were sent to the paupers’ cemetery on Ward’s Island, separated from nearby Randall’s Island by a treacherous channel aptly called Little Hell’s Gate. Its forty-five acres contained hundreds of thousands of corpses. Those who could be identified were packed into mass graves, while nameless souls got their own bit of dirt, so they could be dug up if anyone ever came forward to claim them.
“We need to interview any relatives we can find,” I agreed. “They might know where the money came from. And if she had any enemies.”
Straker’s Leonard Street digs were just around the corner. Number ninety-one was a faded red-brick building in marginally better shape than its neighbors. A trio of grubby, barefoot boys played on a pile of rubble out front, while a woman with a youthful body and hard, wizened face hung washing up to dry. Flies buzzed around a dead horse that lay ignored in the gutter a few feet away, its body little more than skin and bones.
John paid the hansom driver, who cracked his whip and headed back in the direction of Broadway as fast as he could go. The children gawked at us as we entered the building but no one made a move to block our way. The heyday of truly vicious gangs like the Dead Rabbits had ended a decade before, although even the police still hesitated to enter certain parts of the Five Points, like the notorious Bandit’s Roost.
We ascended a set of rickety stairs to the third floor and found Brady waiting on the landing. He was sweating profusely in the airless shaft and looked relieved to see us.
“The family across the hall hasn’t seen Robert since Monday morning,” he said by way of greeting. “I gave them a few dollars for their cooperation. You wouldn’t believe how many people are living over there.” He produced a key and took in a shaky breath. “I don’t suppose I can put this off any longer. I just pray that Robert hasn’t…” Brady trailed off.
I shared a look with John. We both understood there was a good possibility that Straker had taken his own life in a fit of remorse, or fear of the gallows (the electric chair at New York’s Auburn Prison would get its first customer, a hatchet-murderer, almost exactly one year later). As a medical student at Columbia, John had seen his share of bodies. Myrtle, no stranger to the morgue, delighted in lecturing me on the various aspects
of death by fire or water or the hand of one’s fellow man. But I’d never seen it up close before. I just hoped I wouldn’t faint or otherwise embarrass myself.
Brady turned the key in the lock and pushed the door open. We all stood there silently for a moment taking in the scene. John, for whom action came as naturally as breathing, was the first to enter.
The room was small, illuminated only by a single shaft of light that filtered in through a smudged window looking onto the tenement next door. To the left was a cracked shaving basin, half-filled with murky liquid. An unmade bed occupied the far corner, while a battered dresser and chair made up the rest of the furnishings. The drawers of the former had been yanked out, their contents strewn across the floor. Next to me, Brady let out a long, pent-up breath.
“He appears to have fled,” John said, taking in everything but touching nothing.
The few belongings that remained confirmed Brady’s account of a one-time country gentleman fallen on hard times. A pair of boots stood upright at the foot of the bed. They were expensive and finely made, but the soles had been patched a dozen times and the left toe had a gaping hole. The same was true of the clothing that lay scattered about. It was tailor-made but worn nearly threadbare.
I slowly walked the perimeter of the room. Brady stayed in the doorway, pale-faced and anxious. When I reached the bed, I slid my hand between the thin mattress and the frame. My fingers brushed a hard edge.
“Would you call your friend a sentimental man?” I asked, holding up an oval cameo photograph. It depicted a woman with the same striking, dark good looks as Straker. “His mother, I presume?”
Brady took the cameo and nodded. “Yes, to both counts. That was the only picture he had of her.”
“Curious that he would leave it behind, don’t you think?”
“More than curious,” Brady said thoughtfully. “It’s unthinkable.”
“Even if he was in a great hurry?” I pressed. “Could he have forgotten it?”
“When we were growing up and shared a room together, Robert looked at that picture every day,” Brady said. “More than once, I even overheard him talking to it.” He laughed at John’s expression. “Not in a morbid or disturbing way. Just a son who missed his mother. They were very close.”
“How did his parents die?” I asked.
“They drowned in an accident on Easter Sunday. Their rowboat capsized on a nearby pond and neither knew how to swim. It was a terrible tragedy. Robert was only seven.”
“May I keep this for now?” I asked, examining the cameo. The woman’s full lips were curved in a smile, but her eyes had a cool, detached quality.
“If you wish,” Brady said, handing it back. “Just keep it safe so we may return it to Robert when he is found.”
I continued my circuit of the room, taking care to note every detail, as Myrtle had trained me to do. When I reached the window, I dropped to hands and knees and took out a small magnifying glass.
“Was Mr. Straker a smoker?”
“He took the occasional pipe,” Brady replied.
“But not cigarettes?”
“No, never. He very much disliked the smell.”
I removed an envelope from a hidden pocket in my dress and brushed a small amount of ash into it. “Well, someone was here smoking Turkish Elegantes. He—or she—stood at the window, probably for at least eight minutes. It’s clear from the indentation in the mattress that Mr. Straker was in the habit of sleeping on the right side of the bed, with his feet toward the door. The ash is in an area he would naturally walk through when he awoke, and yet it is undisturbed. Therefore, it was deposited recently.”
Brady clapped his hands. “Brilliant, Miss Pell! So someone else was here.”
“Indeed.”
“But are you really able to pinpoint the exact brand that was smoked?” he asked incredulously.
“She has made a study of tobacco ash,” John replied, grinning. “Miss Pell can distinguish thirty-seven different types, isn’t that so?”
I caught his eye and smiled back. “Thirty-nine, John. But who’s counting?”
“Perhaps this stranger also cut himself shaving?” Brady said faintly.
He had finally ventured into the room and was standing before the basin. He was looking down and I could see his forehead and bat-like ears reflected in a mirror mounted on the wall, no doubt the same that Straker had gazed into when he ranted that it comes through the eyes.
John and I crowded around the basin. What I had initially taken for dirty water was in fact a distinctly pinkish color. John bent down and sniffed it. He said nothing but nodded when I looked at him questioningly.
Someone had washed blood from their hands in this very room.
Chapter 3
My nerves thrummed at this discovery and I was forced to stifle a small scream when at that exact moment the door banged open and Connor came bounding up to us.
“I delivered yer message,” he said, his bright copper hair curling at the ends from the damp heat. He was at the gangly stage, all knees and elbows, but he carried himself with the self-possessed air of a kid for whom adult supervision had been all but non-existent. “What’s in there?”
John moved hastily to block the basin from view.
I’d given him the address in the note I’d left with Mrs. Rivers. Now I was having second thoughts about the wisdom of this decision.
Connor surveyed the room with exaggerated disdain. “Boy, this place is a dump!” he muttered under his breath. Then his sharp eyes fixed on a small blue disc that must have spilled from one of the dresser drawers and rolled half under the bedclothes. Before I could stop him, Connor had snatched it up. He gave a low whistle. “Chamberlain’s,” he said with reverence. “He’s a real class act. Wonder what one of his checks is doing in a joint like this?”
John held out a hand and Connor reluctantly handed it over.
“Mr. Chamberlain’s establishment is one of the finest in the city, even if it is entirely illegal,” John remarked dryly. “Did you know Mr. Straker was a gambler?”
Brady shook his head. “Robert was never a betting man, not even for a friendly card game.”
There was silence for a moment.
“Circumstances may have led him to change his mind,” I said. “And if he had racked up debts, he would have been under a great deal of pressure. Even more than we know of.”
“I don’t see as how he’d even get in the door,” Connor said, scratching his head. “Like I said, Chamberlain’s is a class act. Judges and senators and bankers and what have you. Not no Five Points riff-raff. They’d laugh him right down the front stairs.”
Brady gave the boy a once-over, and didn’t appear impressed at what he saw. Although Connor prided himself on keeping up appearances (his shoes were remarkably clean), he drew the line at soap and water and I had to stop myself from reaching out and swiping at the sooty smudges on his face and ears. In his world, I think that would have been a hanging offense.
“Who is this lad?” Brady demanded coolly.
I groped for an appropriate response. All I knew of Connor’s background is that his mother had died of yellow fever. Myrtle caught him in the act of stealing her billfold two years back, and now paid him quite handsomely to relay the gossip on the streets and find people who didn’t want to be found.
Connor had been sleeping in the gutter or, if he was lucky, flophouses far worse than this one. Now he stayed at Tenth Street most nights. I didn’t know what happened to his father. He never spoke of it and I didn’t press him. There was darkness in Connor’s past, but children can be remarkably resilient, and he was a cheerful kid, even if he did love to play the devil for poor Mrs. Rivers.
“He’s a…free-lance consultant,” I said at last.
“Oh, I like that!” the little cutthroat exclaimed. “Very swank. Think I’ll use it myself.”
“Did you receive an answer to my message?” I asked, hoping to change the subject.
“Yeah. Miss Bly will
meet you at noon. Atlantic Garden.”
“Excellent,” I said. “I’m starving. You’ll join us, won’t you, John?”
He nodded, as Brady’s whole countenance altered from anxiety at our discovery to one of awe.
“Nellie Bly?” he asked. “The reporter?”
“Yes, she’s a dear friend of my…” I caught myself just in time. “Of mine.”
Thankfully, Brady didn’t seem to notice the slip.
“I admire her stories very much,” he exclaimed. “Very much indeed! Such a courageous young lady. Elizabeth simply adores her. Ten Days in a Madhouse…Absolutely shocking.” He fiddled with the key to Straker’s flat. “Do you think I might…come along and meet her?”
I smiled regretfully. “I’m sure she would be delighted, but I think it best if we exercise the utmost discretion. Our appointment is related to the case.” I cast a significant look at the basin. “Which has acquired a particular urgency, as I’m sure you’ll agree. Perhaps another time?”
“Oh yes. Certainly.” Brady swallowed his disappointment. “I should be getting back to the office anyway.” His eyes landed on Connor with no small measure of distaste. “May we speak? In private?”
“Of course.” I gave my messenger fifty cents, which cheered him up considerably, and sent him back to his usual haunts in Greenwich Village with the task of putting the word out to the Bank Street Butchers that there was a considerable reward for the first boy who found Mr. Straker. Then I turned to my client. “You’re wondering if I’m going to go to the police now.”
He nodded.
“I agree that things appear to be more complicated than I first imagined. But I remain unconvinced of your friend’s guilt. So the answer is no. Not yet.”
Brady’s shoulders sagged a little. “Thank you, Miss Pell. I know it looks bad. But the picture…He would have taken it if he’d been able, I just know it! There’s someone else involved, some enemy of Robert’s, and by God, when I find him!” Brady clenched his fists.
“I have to ask for the purposes of elimination, so please don’t take offense,” I said. “But are you by any chance a smoking man?”
