Murder on Millionaires' Row

by Erin Lindsey

  “How do you make it look like…” I stopped myself halfway through the question, my gaze falling on a bit of broken glass. Stepping around the bed, I found the remnants of a mirror lying on the floor, just a short reach from Frederick Crowe’s outstretched hand.

  “Care to explain that?” Chapman wasn’t asking me, but I answered all the same.

  “To see the shade,” I said, squatting. “The killer was trying to make it look like Mr. Crowe grabbed the mirror when he realized a spirit was in the room.”

  “Shades can’t be seen with the naked eye,” Mr. Wiltshire explained, “not without aid of a mirror, moonlight, or flame. Crowe would have known that.”

  “But it’s obviously been staged,” I said.

  Chapman arched an eyebrow. “Because?”

  I could feel Mr. Wiltshire’s eyes on me. He didn’t interject, waiting to hear my answer.

  All right, Rose. Here’s your chance. Clearing my throat, I said, “He was obviously sleeping when the attack happened. If it wanted to, the shade could have killed him before he even got out of bed.” An icy throb in my chest cut me short, and for a fleeting moment I felt it all over again: bone-piercing cold, sinking its roots into me, bristling along my veins in tiny webs of frost … I’d barely managed to tear myself free of the bloody woman’s grasp, and I’d been awake and alert, with a shade who hadn’t really been trying to hurt me. “Even supposing he woke up in time, why didn’t he run? Or if he just had to get a glimpse of the shade, why not use those, when they were so much closer to hand?” I pointed at the bedside table, where a box of matches sat beside a lamp.

  Mr. Wiltshire smiled down at his shoes and gave a little shake of his head. “Well done, Miss Gallagher. I’d missed that entirely.”

  “Then how did you—”

  He raised his left hand and wriggled his fingers. “Because, like me, Freddie Crowe was left-handed.” He gestured at the mirror on the floor, which lay within easy reach—of Crowe’s right hand. “So you see, Sergeant, it’s a fabrication, and not a terribly convincing one. Admittedly, it’s difficult to simulate death by freezing, but even so this is a poor effort.”

  “Freezing, huh?” Chapman sucked on a tooth. “Well, ain’t that just goddamn great.”

  Mr. Wiltshire and I exchanged a look. “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “Just seems like a hell of a coincidence how many folks we got freezing to death these last few weeks. That’s why the coroner’s not here yet—three bodies this morning alone. Two of ’em indigents, but the third … just an ordinary fella. No reason he should be turning up frozen, ’specially indoors.”

  Mr. Wiltshire paled. “I had no idea. There’s nothing in the papers.”

  “A line here and there, maybe, when it’s somebody well-to-do, but the papers ain’t much interested in that sorta thing. Same goes for the ghost stories. They cover one now and again, but even then it’s a drop in the bucket compared to what we been seeing down at the precinct lately. Hardly a day goes by we don’t get some hysterical report or another. Most of the fellas laugh it off, but a few of us … well, we ain’t laughing.”

  “There was a story just this afternoon in the World,” Mr. Wiltshire said. “Did you see it?”

  Chapman shook his head. “But you can be sure that for every story you find in the papers, there’s ten you don’t. Folks tend to keep that sorta thing to themselves.”

  “It’s even worse than I thought,” Mr. Wiltshire said, half to himself. “So many deaths … There must be dozens of shades on the loose, perhaps more.”

  A grim silence settled over Frederick Crowe’s bedroom.

  “Got any idea what could cause something like that?” Chapman asked.

  “Perhaps, but the more important question is, what can be done to stop it? There, I’m afraid I have no idea. I’ll have to consult with my associates.”

  Chapman didn’t look very reassured. “Anything I can do?”

  “You can keep looking into Frederick Crowe’s murder. It’s connected somehow, I’m sure of it.”

  As if on cue, the Bloodhound appeared in the doorway. “Got a scent,” she declared. “Gonna be tough to track, though.”

  Mr. Wiltshire frowned. “Why is that?”

  “Scent’s good and masked. His clothes reek of half a dozen stronger things.”

  “I thought scents appeared to you as colors.”

  “Just ’cause I can see ’em don’t make it easy to tell ’em apart. Like pouring a bunch of different paints into the same bucket: Eventually you just get shit brown. I still got a scent, like I said, but it’s soaked in cheap cigars and rotten coal gas.”

  My hand flew to my mouth.

  “Gas, is it?” Chapman grunted. “Speaking of unlikely coincidences.”

  “Ain’t no coincidence,” Annie said. “Pink here’s got the same smell on him. Fainter, on account of him washing up, but it’s still there.”

  Chapman narrowed one eye. “Well, now, maybe we’re getting somewhere, assuming you’re right. Which, by the way, how do you…” He held up his hands. “No, you know what? I don’t wanna know.”

  I was barely listening to the exchange. Something had just occurred to me, a thought worrying enough to push everything else aside. “Pietro. Oh, no…”

  “Your mother’s boarder?” Mr. Wiltshire frowned. “What’s he got to do with this?”

  “I sent him to ask after the Irishman. Oh, God…”

  “Take it easy, Miss Gallagher,” Sergeant Chapman said, his voice extra grandfatherly now. “Where did you send him?”

  “Augusto’s.”

  The Bloodhound snorted at that. “Bad idea.”

  “Yes, thank you,” I snapped, only too happy to have a target for my distress—not that Annie cared a whit. She just sneered at me, showing a single brown tooth.

  “The Italian grocer?” Mr. Wiltshire’s frown deepened—and then it cleared. “I see. You thought perhaps he might be able to find out who hired the thugs at the gasworks. Clever.” Sighing, he added, “And dangerous.”

  Stupid, Rose. How could you be so stupid? “I’ve got to stop him.”

  Shoving my way past a startled Annie, I ran for the door.

  CHAPTER 20

  ON THE SIDE OF CAUTION—AUGUSTO’S—TRUE FEAR

  I was halfway down the block by the time the carriage caught up with me. “Get in,” Mr. Wiltshire said. “We’ll go together.”

  I didn’t slow down, hustling toward the train station with my dress hitched up around my calves. “You don’t have time. The Bloodhound—”

  “—can manage on her own quite admirably, as can Sergeant Chapman.”

  “What about what you said in there, about dozens of shades…” I stopped myself short, throwing a furtive look at the coachman. “If things are as bad as you say, don’t you think you ought to be focusing on that?”

  “And I shall.” Lowering his voice, he added, “Please, Rose, this is terribly undignified.”

  Belatedly, I realized what we must look like—me hurrying down the sidewalk with my dress hitched up, Mr. Wiltshire leaning out of a moving carriage, hand extended in supplication. Quite a scene for the Fifth Avenue set. On top of which, here I was running away from the very man I’d spent the past week obsessively pursuing. The irony would have been laughable under other circumstances.

  But he was still Thomas Wiltshire, so when he said my name again, followed by a gentle “Please,” I was powerless to deny him; I took his hand and stepped up into the carriage, furious at the way my whole body thrilled at his touch. How strong could my anxiety for Pietro really be if it was so easily pushed aside, even if only for a moment?

  “Why did you run away like that?” Mr. Wiltshire regarded me with a mixture of irritation and concern.

  How could I explain it to him? “This is my mistake. I need to be the one to fix it. If anything were to happen to Pietro because of me…”

  “Try not to worry unduly. Perhaps he hasn’t yet acted on your request. And even if he has, I
’m sure he understands the risks. He’s a neighborhood fellow, isn’t he? In my experience, Five Pointers know how to take care of themselves. Present company included.”

  I wasn’t in the mood to be coddled, even by him. “You didn’t sound so confident of that earlier, when you were trying to persuade me to stay out of all this.”

  Something dark passed through his eyes, and he looked away. “Yes, well. The protective instinct is an unreliable thing, isn’t it? It doesn’t always present itself at the right moment, in the right measure. Perhaps you think me overcautious, but that hasn’t always been the case.” Softly, he added, “To my lasting grief.”

  For a moment, I didn’t understand. And then I did, and I wanted to kick myself. “You lost someone.”

  “It was a long time ago,” he said, gazing out the window. “But it will be with me to the end of my days, so I trust you’ll understand if I prefer to err on the side of caution.”

  So much fell into place then, and for the first time I knew what it was to experience someone else’s pain as your own. I wanted to go to him—to slide down the seat and take his hand, even just touch his shoulder—but I was afraid it would be an intrusion. So I stayed where I was, staring at my lap and hating myself. “I’m sorry,” I said. “And I do understand. That’s why I have to find Pietro before he puts himself in danger.”

  “Of course, but that doesn’t mean you have to do it alone.”

  “I just thought, with everything that’s going on—”

  “But it’s all of a piece, isn’t it? The men at the gasworks, the murder, the cipher manuscripts … As for the outbreak of shades, there is little I can do until I’ve had a chance to consult Wang’s people, not to mention the shade we saw last night. She could prove to be the key to all this.”

  As always, the mention of the bloody woman sent a throb of cold through my breast. Suppressing a shudder, I said, “How’s that?”

  “If I’m right, and there is a portal to the otherworld somewhere nearby, the seal has obviously been compromised. Which means the dead are escaping from their domain into ours.”

  “God in Heaven.” For a moment I just sat there, my body rocking limply with the rhythm of the carriage, too stunned even to summon a proper prayer. To my Catholic ears, it sounded disturbingly close to the Book of Revelation. I tried to push that thought aside, reasoning that if we were truly facing the End Times, Mr. Wiltshire would look a little more perturbed.

  “Some of the dead, at any rate,” he went on. “For now, the phenomenon appears to be confined to shades from the local area, which suggests that they dwell nearest the breach. Hovering in the lobby of the otherworld, if you will.”

  “How … how many are we talking about?”

  He shook his head. “No way of knowing. And unless the situation is contained, it could well spread.”

  “So how do we contain it?” My voice betrayed only a slight tremor. There’s a limit, I think, to how much shock a person can experience in twenty-four hours, and I’d reached it. The rest would have to be stored away for later.

  “I wish I knew,” Mr. Wiltshire said. “This is quite beyond my experience. Hopefully, our friend from last night will be able to tell us more.”

  The bloody woman. She was no friend of mine. Just the thought of her sent another stab of ice between my ribs.

  “But she will only appear after sunset, so there’s nothing to be done until then.” Checking his watch, he said, “Twenty past three. That gives us a little over an hour. We ought to be able to find Pietro by then.”

  “We might already be too late. It’s like Sergeant Chapman said: Anybody willing to murder a pair of high society brothers won’t think twice about hurting somebody like Pietro. If the men from the gasworks hear he’s been asking questions…”

  “Don’t do this to yourself,” Mr. Wiltshire said gently. “You had no way of knowing the men at the gasworks were murderers.”

  Maybe not, but I’d known they were dangerous. I’d just been too selfish, too reckless, to let that stop me. I’d put my friend in danger—a friend who just happened to live with my mother.

  It will be with me to the end of my days, Mr. Wiltshire had said.

  I prayed I wasn’t about to learn firsthand what that felt like.

  * * *

  “You’re sure he’ll be here?” Mr. Wiltshire asked, eying the red-and-green awning of Augusto’s.

  “Unless he’s working. Saturdays can go either way with him.” I tried to peer around the lettering on the window, but it was a waste of time; I couldn’t see much of anything. If I wanted to find Pietro, I’d have to go inside. “No point in both of us going. That would only draw attention.”

  “Then perhaps I ought to be the one to—”

  “This is my mess, Mr. Wiltshire. I need to clean it up.” I like to think I’d have felt that way even if I wasn’t so eager to prove myself. As it was, I wanted Mr. Wiltshire to know that I was the sort of person who took care of her own problems.

  “As you wish,” he said, though he didn’t look happy about it. “Shall we meet at Wang’s?”

  “Give me ten minutes,” I said, and began to squeeze my way through the usual crowd of loafers under the awning.

  An even bigger crowd awaited me inside, women of all ages jostling and chatting amiably as they stocked up for dinner. Augusto’s wasn’t a specialist like Luigi’s or the salumeria up the block, but he boasted the cheapest olive oil on Mulberry Street, as well as an assortment of cheeses from his native Bologna that apparently couldn’t be had anywhere else in New York. I got this from Pietro, of course, who never tired of banging on about the superiority of Italian cuisine. Even so, I had a strong suspicion that the lion’s share of Augusto’s profits were not dairy based.

  A heady fragrance of garlic accompanied me to the back, where, to my great relief, I immediately spied Pietro among the collection of young men drinking and laughing at the counter. His eyes widened when he saw me, and he moved quickly to intercept me. “Fiora, what are you doing here? Is your mama all right?”

  “I haven’t seen her since this morning, but I think so.” Throwing a quick look around, I lowered my voice. “We need to talk. Someplace private.”

  “There is no place private in here, that’s for sure.”

  “Back at the flat, then? Just for a moment.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Not here,” I said, putting a hand on his arm. “Please?”

  “Pietro,” called a deep voice, “Chi è questa bella signorina?”

  Pietro’s glance went over my shoulder, and his smile grew strained. “Augusto. This is my landlady’s daughter, Rose.” His brown eyes shifted back to me, and they held a clear message: Careful.

  Summoning my most charming smile, I turned.

  I’m not sure what I expected to find, but the short, stocky man standing behind me wasn’t it. Jovial and leathery, with wild salt-and-pepper eyebrows that seemed to be searching for a means of escape, he looked like somebody’s eccentric uncle. “Augusto, I’ve heard so much about you.”

  “Have you?” The wild eyebrows climbed a fraction. “Good things, I hope?”

  “Why, I can hardly drag Pietro away from here, he loves it so much.”

  “Why drag him at all? Join us! We have the best wines in New York, direct from Italy. I will open a bottle just for you. A nice Chianti, sì?”

  “What a lovely offer,” I said, grinning for all I was worth. “But I’ll have to take you up on it another time. I need Pietro to come home with me for a moment, if you all can spare him.”

  I probably should have chosen my words more carefully. A burst of laughter went up from the counter, followed by a series of jibes that you didn’t need to speak Italian to get the gist of. I didn’t mind so much for myself—there’s nothing quite like an outbreak of deadly spirits wandering the streets to put things in perspective—but poor Pietro flushed to the tops of his ears. He shot something irritable over his shoulder, but that only earned him another
round of ridicule.

  Augusto, though, wasn’t laughing; he was too busy staring at the stitches on the side of my forehead. “What happened to you?”

  “Oh, it’s nothing. Just a little accident.”

  “An accident.” He cocked his head, one eye narrowed shrewdly. “This does not by chance have something to do with what Pietro asked me this morning? About some Irishmen?”

  My heart fluttered uneasily, but I forced myself not to look at Pietro. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you mean.”

  He didn’t buy that for a moment. “These are delicate questions. I ask myself, why does young Pietro want to know about these things? Maybe he has a grudge, sì? Now I think maybe I understand.” Dark eyes shifted to Pietro, and he said something in Italian. Pietro didn’t answer, but his uneasy expression said plenty.

  The conversation was slipping out of control. I’d just pulled up in Mr. Wiltshire’s hired brougham, an awfully conspicuous means of getting around in Five Points. It wouldn’t take much for Augusto to start putting the pieces together, and that could be very bad for Pietro. I needed to throw him off the scent, fast.

  I brought a hand to my temple, leaving it there long enough for everyone to see how it trembled. “They came out of nowhere,” I said in a quavering whisper. “I thought they were going to…” Swallowing, I finished, “It could have been worse.”

  Augusto’s eyes hardened. All of a sudden, he didn’t look so harmless. “Where? In the street?”

  “In the gashouse district.” Then, borrowing a little flourish from Mr. Burrows: “In broad daylight, if you can imagine. One of them had a pistol, and he…” I paused to let a few tears brim in my eyes. It wasn’t hard to do. After everything I’d been through over the past twenty-four hours, it was a miracle I’d only broken down once already.

  Augusto scowled, and the young men at the counter exchanged dark glances. There, I thought. Now Pietro had a good reason for asking after a bunch of Irish roughs. Even so, if word got around that he had a grudge against them, no matter the reason, he could still be in trouble. I needed to make it clear that I was the one looking for them.