Gilded Needles (Valancourt 20th Century Classics)

by Michael McDowell

  Rob smiled and said, “Here, keep it hid in this cloth. Also some brandy and sandwiches.” He pushed the items through the slot, and Maggie took them gratefully. Daisy watched these transactions with apparent amusement, and though she said nothing, she shielded Rob’s actions from the view of the guards.

  “Here,” said Rob, pulling from his back pocket a folded page of a newspaper, “Nana says you’re to read this.”

  Maggie took the paper, unfolded it, and glanced over it briefly. It was a detailed account of the murder of Cyrus Butterfield, of her part in it, and even of her arrest the previous night. The article was florid and impassioned, but for the most part accurate.

  “It was Lady Weale that peached,” giggled Daisy.

  “Yes,” replied Maggie, “I was almost certain. Daisy, tell Lena to send a cart to Bleecker Street and have everything taken away. Mrs. Weale will have already been through everything looking for my jewels, but she won’t have found them and she won’t have dared to be rid of the furnishings yet. Take everything; even if I’m ever to leave this place, it won’t be to return there. You’ll find my jewels secreted in closed pockets within the hems of the parlor draperies. Hold them against my release—”

  Daisy nodded. “Done today. Maggie, you think harm might come to Lady Weale?” she asked suggestively.

  Maggie shook her head. “I don’t think it would help me.”

  “Nana wants to know if we should talk to anybody,” said Rob.

  “Talk . . . ?”

  “Someone who can help you, Maggie,” said Daisy.

  “Duncan—”

  “Front name or back name?” demanded Rob. “Where’s he live?”

  “I don’t know,” said Maggie, “Duncan’s his Christian name, and that’s all I know. I go to court tomorrow. Try to find him for me, I think he may be a lawyer.”

  Daisy smiled and whispered, “Ma says take care, Ma says don’t worry about the jewelry, Ma says you never left anything with her, Ma says that’s what she’ll say at the trial—”

  The guard approached from down the corridor. Daisy Shanks clapped her son on the shoulder and took a step backward. Rob’s face immediately changed its expression and character. He suddenly wore the morose aspect of a simpleton. “Oh, ma! Oh, ma!” he bleated, staring through the bars at Maggie. Daisy dragged him out of the way so that the guard might bend and fetch out the untouched tray of food.

  “Won’t do you no good not to eat,” he remarked, “ ’cause they’ll hang you ’fore you get the ’tunity to starve.”

  Maggie glared at him and held her hand tight over the packet of opium secreted behind her.

  “This her boy?” demanded the guard of Daisy. He glanced critically at Rob, who wrapped his legs around one another in a good imitation of an imbecile.

  Daisy Shanks grinned and nodded. “Boy wouldn’t bring half a dollar on the open market,” she laughed.

  “No,” agreed the guard, “don’t look like he’s going to make much of a name for himself as a orphan, does he?”

  Rob snuffled and wiped his face energetically against the sleeve of his jacket. The guard walked away, with the remark that they had been there long enough.

  Daisy once more moved to the door, filling it, with Rob pushed up against the bars. “Take care” he whispered to Maggie with a wink of his intelligent eye, “we’ll be back.”

  They turned away, and Maggie whispered, “Thank you . . .”

  She stood at the door of the cell and watched the strange pair as they moved down the long corridor. Daisy paused at several cells to exchange pleasantries with women she had come across professionally. Rob knocked from one wall to another, poked his bony arms through the barred doors, wept hysterically, and jabbered as if he hadn’t an ounce of good sense in his body.

  Chapter 21

  Early on the evening of February 22, Judge James Stallworth and Duncan Phair sat alone in the parlor of the house on Gramercy Park. It was dark and cold without and the shutters of the parlor, though unclosed, opened on so black a night that they were as good as shut. Duncan stood nervously before the fire, fingering a China ornament on the mantel with such diligence that the mournful shepherd was in danger of losing, at the very least, all the blue of his painted pantaloons. For the most part Duncan avoided the gaze of his father-in-law, who sat stiffly in an already uncomfortable horsehair sofa.

  “Lightner ought to be reprimanded,” said the Judge. “It is inexcusable that that reporter should print the story without consulting you. I am incensed, Duncan, and I wonder that you haven’t presented yourself before Lightner and demanded of him an explanation of his reprehensible conduct.”

  “I’ll see him tomorrow. That will be time enough. I had rather not approach him in anger.”

  Judge Stallworth glanced at Duncan sharply—his son-in-law seemed dispirited, unhappy, abstracted. A dozen different emotional discomforts played across his visage—but none of them was anger.

  “Duncan,” said he, “this reporter is attempting to break free of our influence, and we of course shall not allow him to do so. Such an incident must not recur—”

  “No.”

  “—for I see that you are quite broken up over it . . .”

  Duncan made no reply.

  “Now,” continued the judge, “I would suggest that you volunteer your services to the office of the city prosecutor and participate in the state’s case against the woman Kizer—”

  Duncan’s look was so wild and full of horror that Judge Stallworth involuntarily paused.

  “Why do you stare so, Duncan? It is not so terrible a thing to take on one case without prospect of remuneration, I think. Tell the prosecutor that you were a particular friend of Butterfield—”

  “No, Father,” interrupted Duncan nervously, who trembled to think how easily his liaison with Maggie might be discovered. “The Democrats will hardly let me share in the glory of this arrest and this conviction. The Tribune has been down too hard upon them, and they might actually believe that I volunteered in order to . . . to . . . to get the woman off, and so embarrass them.”

  “Well,” said Judge Stallworth, as he crossed his elegant, bony legs before the fire, “I think then that the least you must do is to attend the trial and write it up for the Tribune—don’t leave that to Lightner too—show where the Democrats go wrong and so forth. I’ve sent word to the Tombs that the arraignment is to be tomorrow morning at ten o’clock, so you may be sure to be present. It is not customary for me to act as magistrate, but in this case I think I must. One never knows to what extent the Democrats may bungle, and we certainly have considerable interest in seeing this woman put to trial.”

  Duncan did not dare refuse his father-in-law, but at the same time that he shortly acquiesced he was attempting to formulate an excuse for his absence from that courtroom. It was imperative that Maggie Kizer not catch sight of him. Ignorant of his surname, she had no way of finding him in the city, could not direct any message to him; and Duncan Phair, despite the real affection with which he had regarded this young unfortunate woman, had determined that they should never, under any circumstances, meet again.

  Maggie Kizer was a woman who in normal circumstances would not betray displeasure, or surprise, or even sudden relief by any abrupt movement or alteration of expression; she was too well bred to be easily astonished and too circumspect to show her hand. But who knew what Maggie’s reaction might be if, on trial as an accomplice to murder, she were to see Duncan Phair, possibly her only protector, in the courtroom? Surely she would turn and gaze at him with an intensity to draw the wonder of the whole court; surely she would take the opportunity to direct a few words to him. And even if she made no attempt to communicate with him, Maggie would soon learn through discreet questioning of her attendants that her erstwhile paramour was the son-in-law of the judge who would determine
her fate.

  Duncan Phair could not afford to have it known that he was acquainted with one of the criminals that the Tribune had scourged the police department for not being able to find. It was already known in some quarters that Duncan Phair was assisting in the newspaper’s investigations and the discovery now that he had visited Bleecker Street in a private capacity would surely discredit the entire scheme, would raise the judge’s indomitable ire against him, and would infuriate and humiliate Marian. Just now his ultimate success or failure in life seemed to hinge upon the single question of whether Maggie Kizer ever discovered the surname of the protector she knew only as “Duncan.”

  Duncan suspected that the judge, much as he loved his daughter, would not be shocked or even particularly displeased to know that Duncan had taken a mistress; and Duncan was not even certain that Marian would be overly distressed herself. But that he had chosen to compromise himself in the bedroom where Cyrus Butterfield had been stabbed to death with an opium needle would be thought to be carrying indiscretion beyond permissible boundaries.

  Beyond these fears for his own future, the lawyer was distressed for his mistress’s position. There seemed little doubt that she would be indicted, and already James Stallworth had said that the trial, in the interests of publicity, would be a speedy and sharp one—and if the woman was guilty, as she certainly appeared to be, she would be hanged as an accomplice and accessory.

  “Hanged?” cried Duncan, “she needn’t be hanged, need she, Father? It wasn’t she, by the testimony of the landlady, who killed Butterfield?” Duncan had, with wavering vision and clenched teeth, read twice through the article that had appeared in that Sunday morning’s Tribune; this while locked in his dressing room, that his acute distress might not be viewed by either his wife or the servants. He had been fortunate in being alone when first discovering the dreadful news.

  “No,” said Judge Stallworth lightly, “but since we don’t have the man Kizer—who actually did the killing—we must make do with his accomplice. The wife will stand for the husband. I couldn’t let this go by, even if I wanted to—and I certainly don’t—for then the Democratic newspapers would come down upon me, saying that the Democrats caught her and the Democrats prosecuted her and a Republican judge let her off. We can hardly lay ourselves open to that sort of charge, Duncan.”

  “No,” said Duncan softly, turning away; ashamed of his own feeling of hope to think that if Maggie were tried, convicted, sentenced, and hanged, he need fear for himself no longer.

  Duncan Phair told himself that if Maggie were guilty she deserved the law’s punishment, but it was a wrenching difficulty to imagine that fine woman standing on the gallows in a plain blue skirt, having prayers read to her by a greasy priest. And yet there was nothing that he could do to save her, Duncan told himself; his presence might console her a little, his assurances might lessen her fear for an hour; but she would mount the scaffold all the same, and the greasy priest would mumble the same useless prayers. The rope would break the same bones in her graceful neck whether or not he stood beside her in those last moments—so why then destroy his fine crowded future for the sake of a few moments of comfort proffered, perhaps vainly, a dying woman? If Maggie knew his position she would understand and not condemn his reluctant, difficult decision to abandon her.

  On the following morning, Duncan sent his father-in-law a message that he was ill in bed; and in bed he remained until shortly after noon, when he received word from Simeon Lightner that Maggie Kizer had been arraigned as an accomplice and accessory in the murder of Cyrus Butterfield. Judge Stallworth had set bail at fifteen thousand dollars, which sum Maggie of course had been unable to raise, and she had been immediately returned to her small stone apartments in the Tombs. Duncan Phair dressed and took the cars down to his offices on Pearl Street.

  Chapter 22

  On Thursday afternoon, after Maggie Kizer’s arraignment in the morning, Simeon Lightner made his way up to Bleecker Street, there to present Lady Weale with a bank draught for $3,340. The editor of the Tribune had authorized the payment—even though Maggie Kizer was not yet convicted—in the interests of publicity.

  Simeon was much surprised to find a great cart pulled up before Mrs. Weale’s steps, into which three large men of dangerous aspect were loading a substantial amount of fine furniture: chairs, sofas, rolled-up carpets, tables, mirrors, and crates of smaller items. They were not being as careful as they might have been and many pieces were nicked, chipped, stained, or even broken altogether. But what they lacked in delicacy they made up in discretion, and would not answer any of Simeon’s inquiries as to who had sent them, by whose authority they were emptying the house, and whither the objects were bound.

  Unsatisfied by the three men, who ignored him wholly except once or twice to butt him with the sharp corner of some piece of furniture, Simeon descended the half-dozen steps to Mrs. Weale’s kitchen entrance and knocked at her grimy window. Mrs. Weale, stationed just behind the door, motioned him to go away, but when he waved the draught for the reward money before the glass she grudgingly admitted him. Once she had received the draught and signed the receipt for it, she was all for Simeon’s removing himself; but Simeon began to question her about the activity outside the house, and persuaded her to ascend out of the kitchen to have a better view of the work in progress.

  “Are those the belongings of Madame Kizer?”

  “Yes, and everything you see there is mine!” cried Lady Weale. “It’s owed me in back rent. It’s all owed to me! And half of it was mine anyway, only lent for the duration of her habitude! And they’re taking it all away! Taking it all away!”

  “Who’s taking it away?” said Simeon.

  “Don’t you see them!”

  “Yes,” said Simeon, “but where are the things being taken?”

  “Don’t know, don’t know!” moaned Lady Weale. “Everything you see is mine there!” She kicked a dog that was passing on the walk, to send it yelping into the paths of two of the men carrying out Maggie Kizer’s bedstead; but one of the men gave the dog another kick, backward, and proceeded without mishap.

  “If it’s yours, then why don’t you have a policeman stop them from doing it? These men, even if they are licensed movers—and I’ve no reason to suppose that they are, since there’s no sign painted upon their cart—have no right to transfer the belongings of a person without her permission.”

  “They brought a cop with ’em, made me let ’em in, told me to keep out of their way! I went to get another cop, if you see what I mean, but the first cop told him it was all right. It’s not all right! Everything you see there is mine and they’re carting it away and I’ll never see a stick or a shred of it again. Holy Mother of Moses, I’m being robbed!”

  While Simeon Lightner comfortably seated himself upon a stone balustrade of the neighboring house, Lady Weale retreated to her kitchen, where she raised the window and tossed out potatoes onto the walk, in hopes of tripping up the three men who were depriving her of Maggie Kizer’s belongings. The reporter amused himself then by noting an inventory of the goods that were brought out, and peering over into the cart and making up a list, as best he could, of what had already been loaded. A quarter of an hour later the cart was filled, and two of the men jumped up onto the board.

  The third went and stood just above the kitchen window in the cellar of the house, where Mrs. Weale growled at him and hurled another potato.

  He caught it, squeezed it to pulp and water in his powerful fist. “We’ve not done,” he said, “so don’t try to lock up or we’ll just break down the door when we return.”

  He hopped up beside his compatriots and the two overburdened horses attached to the cart lumbered away.

  Traffic on Bleecker Street was heavy and the animals’ progress was slow. Simeon sat on the balustrade a few minutes more, then hopped down, tipped his hat to Mrs. Weale who had come out to ga
ther up her potatoes—either for the pot or a repeated assault—and sauntered on after the cart.

  “They’re going to Houston Street,” snapped Lady Weale, and Simeon paused.

  “You do know then?”

  “No,” she said, “not certain, but I’ll bet these potatoes they’re on their way to Black Lena’s.”

  “What’s the number?”

  Lady Weale shrugged, and descended the steps to her cellar door.

  Simeon considered whether he might not hurry ahead to Houston Street, hunt out Black Lena’s, and wait for the cart; but then he considered that Lady Weale might be mistaken, or even deliberately trying to mislead him, and thought it better, on the whole, if he followed the cart at a distance. Piled high with fine furniture, it was distinctive enough a vehicle in that neighborhood that Simeon had no difficulty in keeping it in view from a distance. He did not want to risk the ire of the men driving if they discovered that he were dogging their tracks. So in this easy but discreet fashion, Simeon Lightner followed Maggie Kizer’s belongings from Bleecker to West Houston Street and watched, from a little distance, as everything was carried into the shop at number 201.

  The next evening, Duncan Phair and Judge James Stallworth dined at the Republican lawyers’ club on Seventeenth Street, and the judge said to his son-in-law: “Well, I hope that you’re relieved of your indisposition, Duncan. I can’t tell you how disappointed I was that you were unable to attend the arraignment yesterday.”

  “Oh yes,” replied Duncan nervously, “I’m much better now, almost my old self.”

  “I didn’t like seeing Lightner there alone, but I must say that it looks as if he may at last have done us a piece of very good business.”

  “What’s that?” asked Duncan curiously.