The Daemoniac

by Kat Ross

“Yes, we were very close,” I said, pinching the tender flesh inside my elbow so that tears sprung to my eyes. “Now, as to your fee…”

  Mr. Dawbarn sighed gently, as though such earthly matters were well beneath him, and gestured to a small plaque that featured the full menu of his services, ranging from written communications transcribed while in a trance to an hour-long communion with “discarnate entities.” Edward and I opted for the last one, which cost $5.

  As Mr. Dawbarn prepared for the séance, I took a quick look around. The parlor contained a single bookcase with titles like The Spirits’ Book by Allan Kardec, The Night Side of Nature by Catherine Crowe, and Mysteries by Charles Elliott. A heart-shaped planchette with a pencil attached sat on a shelf, but the layer of dust on top signalled that it had not been called into service for so-called automatic writing in several months at least. A sad vase of wilted flowers and rather threadbare rug completed the furnishings.

  “Let us sit and join hands.” Mr. Dawbarn took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “We must ask each question only one time. And once it begins, I must request that you not leave the table for any reason. We must maintain the circle.”

  I cast a sidelong glance at Edward, trying hard not to giggle.

  “Certainly, Mr. Dawbarn,” I said, hoping he took the quaver in my voice for fear rather than amusement. “I’ve only been to one other séance before. Madame Valentina von Linden. She helped us talk to dear Uncle Albert. He seemed very happy.”

  The medium’s eyes opened. He cast a wary look my way. “Von Linden?”

  “Oh yes. She was marvellous! Wasn’t she, Frank?” I nudged Edward with my foot.

  “Quite,” he said faintly.

  Mr. Dawbarn seemed to relax when he realized that we were unaware of “Valentina von Linden’s” fall from grace. “I am pleased you have some prior experience,” he said.

  “Do you know her?” I persisted. “I mean, you’re both so well-respected.”

  His chest puffed out a bit at this. “We have met. But we moved in different circles. She charged such lofty fees that only the rich could afford her services. I prefer a sliding scale that’s more democratic.” He gave us an oily smile. “All classes should have the opportunity to communicate with their dearly departed, should they so desire.”

  Which I took to mean, I’m willing to fleece even the poorest citizens if they’re desperate enough.

  “So she catered mainly to society?” I asked.

  “One might say that.” And now it seemed I was starting to arouse his suspicions, because he frowned. “Shall we proceed? Or do you wish to spend all morning discussing Madame von Linden? Because I’m afraid I have other clients arriving…”

  We assured him that we did indeed wish to continue, and spent the next half hour listening to rapping sounds that Mr. Dawbarn assured me was my mother spelling out a message of congratulations on my impending nuptials, with the proviso that I wear a single white rose in my hair. When the table bucked up and down (at the behest of Mr. Dawbarn’s kneecap), I remarked that mother must have taken up weight-lifting as she was always a skinny little thing, and he swiftly concluded the séance.

  “I hope your mind is set at ease,” Mr. Dawbarn said as we forked over a $5 bill.

  “Utterly,” I assured him. “Would you care to see a picture of her?”

  I’m not sure what came over me. But I had a sudden urge to prove conclusively that this man was a fraud. Would not a true psychic be able to tell whether a photograph was truly of the spirit he had just been allegedly communicating with?

  I reached into my bag and pulled out the cameo I’d taken from Straker’s flat, and thrust it into Mr. Dawbarn’s hands.

  “This is your mother?” he asked uncertainly.

  “Yes,” I replied, shooting Edward a warning look, as he was peering over Mr. Dawbarn’s shoulder with unconcealed curiosity.

  There was no doubt that Straker’s mother was a beautiful woman. She had thick raven hair, styled loosely on top of her head so that wisps fell across her bare shoulders. Her eyes were such a dark brown that they appeared black, which complemented her olive skin perfectly. She wore a simple gown with a hint of lace at the bosom. But again, it was her expression that riveted the viewer’s gaze. A certain narrowness to the heavy-lidded, almond-shaped eyes, a slight upturn to the lips that spoke of cunning, even cruelty…

  Mr. Dawbarn gazed upon Straker’s mother for a long moment and then a curious thing happened. He gave a shudder; not an ostentatious shudder, but one that seemed to emanate from some primal part of his being.

  “She died by violence, did she not?” he asked, pushing the cameo back at me.

  “Drowning,” I said. “It was an accident.”

  “Something unclean has touched this,” Mr. Dawbarn muttered, wiping his hands on his waistcoat. “There is a…taint.”

  “Taint?” Edward asked. “What does that mean?”

  For the first time, our host seemed at a loss for words. If it was part of his act, he was better than I’d thought.

  “I’m not entirely sure. But I’ve never felt its like.” Mr. Dawbarn suddenly seemed anxious to be rid of us. “Congratulations on your marriage, Miss White.” He herded us toward the foyer like a pair of sheep. “Best of luck to you both.”

  “Thank you,” Edward said. “I—”

  And with that, the door shut firmly in our faces.

  “Well, he could work on his goodbyes,” Edward said as we made our way down the stairs. “Who was that in the picture, anyway?”

  “Straker’s mother,” I responded. “We found the cameo hidden under his mattress. Brady seemed to think it proved that Straker had been the victim of foul play, as he would never leave such a treasured item behind. He was an orphan, you know.”

  “Did she really drown?”

  “That’s what Brady said. Straker’s parents died together in a boating accident.”

  “What do you make of all that talk about something unclean?” Edward lowered his voice an octave in a fair imitation of Mr. Dawbarn.

  “He’s probably trying to get us to come back and pay him more money to find out,” I said, as we reached the street and Edward called for his carriage, which waited on the corner.

  “But he didn’t seem like he wanted us there a second longer,” Edward pointed out. “I think it’s a bit spooky, Harry. There’s something off about that lady.”

  “Now you sound like John,” I grumped.

  We reprised our act six more times that day, in six different but somehow depressingly alike parlors, with little to show for it but aching backs from sitting in hard wooden chairs for hours on end. None of the mediums we consulted knew Becky Rickard by any of her various names, or wouldn’t admit to it if they did. By the last séance, at a house up in Harlem, Edward actually fell asleep midway through and began snoring, which the medium—a stern old bat with an iron-grey bun and black dress whose style had its heyday thirty years ago—didn’t take well.

  I was just starting to despair that the two central figures in the case—Robert Straker and Becky Rickard—would forever remain enigmas when Edward had the idea of calling on the Fox sisters directly. Thanks to his friends who dabbled in Spiritualism, he knew which church they attended on Sundays and suggested that we join the congregation in the morning. I wasn’t at all sure they would talk to us considering the bad publicity they’d been getting, but it was worth a try.

  The other encouraging development was that John’s run of poor luck finally broke. He found out that Becky’s body had indeed been claimed from the Morgue at Bellevue by a sister named Rose, and managed to secure her address, which was a town in western New York called Cassadaga Lake. Afterwards, he canvassed Straker’s neighbors, who confirmed that he drank heavily in the last few months, most often at the dive on Baxter Street below Becky Rickard’s flat. They had never seen him in the company of anyone else, and couldn’t recall any visitors. Apparently, Straker was a solitary fellow who spent most of his time at home alone and rar
ely spoke to his neighbors, which they interpreted as snootiness. Straker was not well-liked, but he never gave anyone trouble either, even when he was dead drunk, which they impressed upon John was an extremely rare quality in the Five Points.

  To me, all of this pointed to some catastrophe befalling the man: either he was the victim of foul play, or his already fragile mind had snapped and sent him on a homicidal rampage. I told John about Billy Finn, who should be reporting back to us any moment now. I wish I’d pressed him harder to tell me where he’d gone. The Bowery and Lower East Side were jam-packed with anonymous lodging houses and fifth-rate hotels. Straker could be holed up in any of them, just one of a thousand lost souls in that miscreant’s paradise. If Billy had indeed found him, I hoped he wouldn’t be foolish enough to tip the man off that he’d been discovered. Connor assured me that Billy was the very soul of discretion, but I wasn’t so sure. A full day had now passed, and I couldn’t help worrying that something had gone wrong.

  John, meanwhile, was leaning toward the supernatural explanation: that Mr. Straker was possessed by one of the minions of Hell. His conviction was starting to infect Edward, who I could see was still troubled by both what we had found in the cellar and Mr. Dawbarn’s strange reaction to the picture of Straker’s mother.

  So when a cable arrived from Uncle Arthur that evening expressing interest in the case and offering the name of an expert in demonology and the occult at St. John’s College, I handed that task over to them. At the very least, the man might be able to identify the symbol burned into the grass near Raffaele Forsizi’s body. And while I doubted that we were dealing with otherworldly forces, it was possible that the killer was under the delusion that they were possessed, which made it necessary to understand precisely what such a fantasy might entail.

  I’ll admit, I was thrilled that Uncle Arthur had written back so quickly. It put the wind back in my sails, which were starting to sag. Myrtle’s system was to gather as much information as possible before drawing any conclusions. She spent days or even weeks in this phase, refusing to discuss the case except in the vaguest generalities. But her brilliance lay in her ability to sort through the haystack of clues and unerringly single out the needle—the one or two pieces of evidence that pointed conclusively to the solution. This was Myrtle’s true gift.

  She had once inferred the guilt of a wife-murdering banker based on a bent hatpin and glass of milk. Another memorable case hinged entirely on the absence of cat hair on a vicar’s socks.

  I had tried to mimic Myrtle’s discipline, but instead of the picture becoming clearer, the lines were bleeding into each other like the watercolors of that rebellious French impressionist Claude Monet. Why was the killer remorseful? And why, then, did he kill again? Was it even a single person? Some gut instinct told me it was, but Myrtle would scoff at such a notion. Hard facts—that’s what solved a case. The problem was, I didn’t have any.

  As I waited in my room that night for Mrs. Rivers to fall asleep, I resolved to make a trip upstate to Cassadaga Lake and see if Rose Rickard could shed any light on her sister’s final days. For if it wasn’t Straker, Becky’s murderer was someone she knew, and knew well. That I felt sure of.

  The clock finally struck eleven and I crept down the stairs, taking care to avoid the creaky floorboard on the second-floor landing. I had dressed formally for the occasion, as Edward suggested: a sea green sheath with a tight-fitting cuirasse bodice and lacy hem that just brushed the floor. My arms were bare, save for a pair of embroidered gloves.

  John wasn’t happy to be left out of our little excursion, but his parents would die if he set foot in a gambling establishment, even if it was the finest in New York, and his brothers had snuck out of the house so many times in their younger, hell-raising years that Judge Weston had paid to have bars installed in the windows of their Gramercy Park mansion. Fortunately, my own parents were more trusting, and it was no difficult matter to make good my escape.

  The night air was deliciously cool as I tripped down the front steps. I gave a little wave to Edward, who waited at the curb in his gleaming barouche. “You look radiant, Harry,” he said as I nodded to his driver, who handed me up into the carriage. “We’ll need every ounce of persuasion we can muster since ladies are frowned upon at Chamberlain’s, if not banned outright. It’s gentlemen only, and when I say gentlemen, I mean the ones who are so wealthy, they don’t even carry cash.” He grinned. “Like me.”

  “Well, I’m not going there to dine on lobster or lose at faro,” I said tartly. “I’m going to find out if he knew Mr. Robert Straker.”

  We turned up Sixth Avenue, passing the turreted brick and sandstone pile of the old Jefferson Market Prison, and followed the elevated Metropolitan Railroad tracks north. Starting at Fourteenth Street, elegant department stores like R.H. Macy’s, Hugh O’Neill’s and the Stern Brothers sat cheek-by-jowl, their windows dark at this late hour.

  Edward lit a cigarette and blew a curl of smoke out the window. “What do you know about John Chamberlain?”

  “Not much,” I said. “Only that he makes a very good living taking money from rich swine.” I smiled. “Like you.”

  Edward laughed. “Yes, that about sums it up. He’s a careful man, Mr. Chamberlain. It’s said that he refuses admittance to men of limited means, men who can’t afford to lose, especially if they have families.”

  “How chivalrous.”

  “Actually, I think it’s genuine. He doesn’t need to squeeze the last pound of flesh from his customers. There are plenty of others willing to do that. No, he’s elevated gambling to a kind of art, and he doesn’t skimp on the amenities. His chef is superb, his wine cellar rivals Delmonico’s, and you’ll be offered the finest cigar afterwards—all free of charge, of course. John understands that he’ll earn it all back tenfold at the card table.”

  “It doesn’t add up, does it?” I mused. “Not exactly Straker’s level. Of course, we don’t even know when he was there. It could have been a long time ago, when he still had some of his inheritance. Maybe he kept the check as a souvenir of better days.”

  “We’ll soon find out,” Edward said, tossing his cigarette into the gutter as the carriage turned onto Twenty-Fifth Street and headed east toward Broadway. “Now listen, Harry. I need you to stay quiet and look pretty.”

  I glowered at him, and Edward shrugged helplessly. “You’re the one who insisted on coming,” he reminded me. “Don’t expect a warm welcome. John will be perfectly polite, he always is, but the others won’t like it. Not one bit. This is their sanctuary, and not even, er, ladies of the evening are permitted.”

  “The whole world is their sanctuary,” I responded with some exasperation, “but I do see your point. The goal is to leave with some information, not annoy the most powerful and arrogant men in New York. I’ll do my best.”

  We stopped in front of a large brownstone that looked the same as its neighbors to either side, except that all the blinds were shut tight. I gave Edward the photograph of Straker as a sign of goodwill that I intended to follow his lead and, shoulders squared like soldiers heading off to battle, we ascended the broad steps to the front door. Our knock was answered by a reserved black man in a butler’s uniform. He appeared to know Edward by sight and ushered us inside without speaking. I smiled at him and received a tiny one back, but he gave no outward hint of surprise or displeasure at my presence.

  If I thought this was a sign that Chamberlain’s clientele would be similarly at ease, I was sorely mistaken.

  The butler took Edward’s overcoat and top hat and opened the door to a front parlor, where he asked us to wait while he summoned the master of the place. It was a lavishly decorated room. Clearly, no expense had been spared to make visitors feel like royalty. My feet sank into velvet carpeting several inches thick as I gazed around in wonder at the ornate furnishings and lavender walls.

  The real action, however, lay beyond the door the butler had disappeared through, and we were the only people there.

&nb
sp; “I always thought this an appropriate motif,” Edward said in amusement, as he stood before a large reproduction of Gustave Doré’s ghoulish Dante and Virgil in the Frozen Regions of Hell. “Don’t ever say John Chamberlain lacks a sense of humor.”

  “And that one?” I asked, checking my reflection in the mirror hanging above a black-veined marble mantelpiece. I could see the painting behind me, a beautiful woman in white with mournful eyes and her hands raised in supplication.

  “That one is Jephthah’s Daughter,” Edward said. “Aren’t you familiar with the Bible story?”

  I stood up on my toes but I was still too short to see more than the top half of my face. Unlike Myrtle, whose coloring was closer to that of our mother, Louise, I took after the paternal Harrison side of the family, whose ancestors were Scots with fair skin, blue eyes and an abundance of freckles. I didn’t have it quite as bad as our poor cousin, Alec, whose freckles had freckles, but the summer sun had brought out a spray across my nose.

  “Jephthah? I don’t know, all those Old Testament names sound the same to me.”

  “That’s because you spend most of your time in church with a chemistry book jammed into the hymnal,” Edward teased.

  “True.” I adjusted my hat to cover my still unfashionably short hair. “So who is he?”

  “A pleasant chap who fought the Ammonites and promised God that if he won, he’d sacrifice the first person who came out of his house when he returned. Unfortunately for his daughter…”

  We stared at the painting for a long moment.

  “Have you ever noticed that women always get the short end of the—”

  I trailed off as the door opened and John Chamberlain entered the room.

  He wasn’t a tall man, but he exuded charisma and sheer presence. He wore an impeccably tailored dark suit that contrasted with Edward’s flamboyant costume like a raven next to a flamingo. He had black hair and eyes, and although he was much older than I was, it didn’t take me long to decide that he was one of the most attractive men I had ever seen.