Gilded Needles (Valancourt 20th Century Classics)

by Michael McDowell

  Rob stood quietly at his aunt’s side and conferred with her at length, often producing a letter from his bright vest, sometimes taking a brief message—and always some morsel of lace or trim that belonged to the ill woman—away with him.

  On Saturday, October 21, however, Rob was given eight letters, each directed to a person other than his grandmother. And Louisa indicated that the missives were to be delivered in a particular order and at particular hours. Rob nodded his understanding and acquiescence. The first of these letters was slipped under the door of Duncan Phair’s offices on Pearl Street; and the second was given directly into the hands of Edward Stallworth. Six more were delivered in the course of that Saturday evening, each to the offices of one of the newspapers in the city: the Tribune, the Times, the Sun, the World, Harper’s Weekly, and the Police Gazette. The letters read:

  Sir,

  If you want to unmask a double-dyed deceteful hypocritical clergyman well known for his preaching against the black Triangle you should take yourself tomorrow Sunday morning at 7 a.m. to no. 2 King St in the black Triangle and find a picture well worth the recording.

  A sincere well-wisher to the cities press.

  All six papers sent representatives, since the story—if true—looked to prove a fine one. Moral turpitude in a high place was at least as interesting as corruption in a low one, and there was no one could not feel satisfaction at the overthrow of a hypocrite, especially one of standing and influence.

  Louisa’s notation concerning the tableau that was to be presented did not go unheeded, and Harper’s Weekly and the Police Gazette assigned artists to accompany its reporters.

  The first reporter to arrive on King Street Sunday morning was Simeon Lightner, his wiry hair positively frizzled in the early morning damp. As he knocked at the door, he was joined by the artist from the Police Gazette. They were admitted to the house by a young woman of fierce aspect, shown into a little barren parlor, and instructed to wait quietly until all their number were present. When she returned to her station behind the street door, the artist whispered to Simeon that the young lady was none other than the celebrated lady pugilist, Charlotta Kegoe.

  Soon all six reporters and both artists had arrived and despite the early hour, formed a jolly company. Commanding quiet, Charlotta then led the eight men up the narrow stairs to the fourth-floor landing, where they were hard put to find room to stand, which caused some barely repressed mirth among them. The artists were given the places beside the door of the room to be entered. In case the promised tableau lasted only briefly, it was thought wise to reserve the best view for those able to reproduce it later.

  Charlotta placed a finger to her lips and swung the door open wide. The reporters craned over the shoulders of the artists to gaze into the room.

  It was a small bedchamber, with a slanting ceiling directly beneath the roof. A single grimy window looked out over King Street and dusty red curtains filtered the hot morning light.

  In the iron bed pushed beneath that single window lay a middle-aged man. Unconsciously, in troubled sleep, he pushed aside the bedclothes, and discovered himself entirely naked between the sleazy sheets.

  At that moment as well, from behind the recumbent figure, whose back was to the reporters in the doorway, there rose the pale, small, smiling face of a young girl. Her long hair fell discreetly over her breast. With a finger to her lips, she too cautioned the reporters to silence. From her nakedness, and her company, and the inevitable conclusion that must be brought to bear upon such a scene, the girl might well have been more bashful than she was.

  But she only smirked, and with scaly fingers turned the heavy head of Edward Stallworth, so that his sleeping countenance fell in full view of the eight men who had eased themselves inside the room.

  He was immediately recognized by the reporter of the Times, who whispered his name aloud. All the others grinned and turned grinning to the stupefied Simeon Lightner, who had to contemplate the chagrin of the Tribune when it became known that the minister whose sermons had been printed week after week in Monday morning’s columns had been discovered in a narrow iron bed beside a young girl who could not be more than fourteen.

  It was certainly true that Simeon Lightner had not been behindhand in chronicling the disasters that had characterized the Stallworths’ fortunes of late, but still the reporter had no relish for this scene. Thinking to alert the minister, Simeon called out his name, but the Times reporter clapped his hand over Simeon’s mouth and drew him out into the hallway. “None of that please,” he laughed, “he’ll wake soon enough. Just let us get our notes and let the artists make their sketches. Then you may have the pleasure of telling the old man that he’s been found out. . . .”

  With the knowledge that no denial on Edward Stallworth’s part would undo the harm already accomplished, Simeon acquiesced, and waited miserably in the hallway. The two artists sat upon the dusty floor, with their tall books laid across their laps, and pencilled in scenes which duplicated each other’s work almost line for line, except that one sketched the two figures as they were—Edward Stallworth with his mouth open and snoring, the young girl perched gaily over his shoulder and exchanging winks and other conspiratorial communications with the reporters—and the other placed the sheets a little higher upon their persons, for propriety’s sake.

  When the artists had completed their work, they stood aside, and the reporters regrouped themselves. One gave the nod to the little girl, and she shook Edward Stallworth into drowsy consciousness.

  He choked on his own thick breath, struggled against the sheets and the unfamiliarity of any bed partner at all, opened his eyes, and stared uncomprehendingly at the strange men grouped about the bed.

  The little girl turned his head and kissed him with a passion that was not entirely credible, considering the ridicule she had displayed toward his sleeping person.

  Edward Stallworth threw the girl off and attempted to rise. Finding himself entirely unclothed, he snatched up the sheets around his neck. He spluttered, but could not find the beginning of coherent speech.

  Simeon Lightner came forward. “Reverend Stallworth,” he said pitifully, “do you know where you are?”

  The article that appeared the following morning in the World began, “While the corpse of his murdered son lay scarcely cold in the narrow plot of Greenwood Cemetery . . .” The other papers were not less cutting, and described in shocking detail the scene in the garret room of the small house in King Street on Sunday morning, when Reverend Edward Stallworth was commonly thought to be so borne down by grief over the death of his murdered son Benjamin that he could not even bear to receive his most important parishioners.

  The Times, which was generally lenient to ministers, charitably submitted that the man had been driven insane by the discovery of his son’s corpse in the morgue; and that he was not morally responsible for this fearful degeneration. Simeon Lightner, following his editor’s commands, timorously submitted that the entire incident had been manufactured by the enemies of virtue, those who stood to lose when the Black Triangle was swept clean. The Tribune stood by the righteous minister of the Madison Square Presbyterian Church, and declared that the unfortunate incident—they gave no details—had been altogether fabricated, a vicious plot of the Democrats, of rival ministers, of a gang of female criminals.

  When the reporters left laughing that Sunday morning, Simeon Lightner haltingly explained to Edward Stallworth what had happened; the minister remained dazed and uncomprehending, and Simeon gave over the attempt. The young girl had disappeared, with a sheet wrapped around her body; and not being able to find the minister’s clothing, Simeon wrapped him in the second sheet, and led him down the stairs to the street door.

  The parlor was deserted, and the celebrated pugilist not to be found.

  Simeon sent a passing child to fetch a cab, and then accompanied Edward back to
the manse, where the maid and Judge Stallworth, who had just arrived, received him with blank horror.

  The Tribune worked hard to discredit the story, and might have succeeded in reducing the strength of the blow that had fallen upon Edward Stallworth, had it not been for the two illustrations that appeared on Wednesday in Harper’s Weekly and in the Police Gazette. No swiveling words dreamt by Simeon Lightner, and not the most ingenious counter-accusations could deflect the crushing weight of those two cuts.

  Many persons did charitably agree with the Tribune that Edward Stallworth had been set up; how else to explain the invitations to the reporters, the lack of surprise evinced by the young girl herself, the difficulty of rousing the man from his sleep, suggesting that he had been drugged? But those same persons were of Marian Phair’s mind exactly: there was something distasteful about victims. Good persons were not set upon in the street; unexceptionable ministers were not entrapped into garret rooms with prostitutes.

  A meeting of the elders of the Madison Square Presbyterian Church that Thursday afternoon relieved Edward Stallworth of all his pastoral and ministerial responsibilities. They also commiserated with him on the troubles that had so recently and with such violence plagued his unfortunate family. At the same time, a committee was appointed to visit certain churches in New Jersey and Connecticut in hopes of finding a minister to take his dishonored place.

  On Thursday night, Edward Stallworth went alone to his study in the Madison Square Presbyterian Church. Into half a dozen small crates he began packing his sermons, books, and letters, but before even half this work was accomplished, he gave over the effort and threw himself into a chair beside the cold hearth. For several minutes he gazed at the stained-glass window of the Shepherd and the Lost Sheep, dimly illuminated by a gaslamp outside. Then from the pocket of his coat he took the pistol with which Benjamin had shot Daisy Shanks, placed the barrel between his lips, and blew away the top of his head.

  Chapter 47

  Edith Phair had not seen her father die. The gilded yen hock needles had been plunged into his neck and head in darkness and later, when they were out of the opium den, Lena Shanks had explained to the little girl that the man who had lain beside Dollie was not her father, but only someone who closely resembled him. Edith was unsure and uneasy, but accepted the explanation.

  Lena Shanks, Edith, Rob, Ella, and Charlotta Kegoe remained nearly a week immured in the house on King Street. Directly after Charlotta, on Sunday morning, had shown the reporters to the garret of the house across the way, she had returned to Lena Shanks, and an hour later, they were gratified to see the minister, wrapped in a sheet and supported by the wiry-haired reporter, standing in the doorjamb, pale and disoriented.

  With great interest on the following days did they follow the reporting in the newspapers of this incident, and though Simeon Lightner’s pronouncement that it was a gang of female criminals that had engineered the destructive escapade caused Lena some alarm when Ella read it aloud to her, the reporter’s equally assured assertion the following day that Tammany Hall was behind it restored her ease of mind.

  On Friday morning, when Ella read of the suicide of Edward Stallworth, actually within the walls of the Madison Square Presbyterian Church, Lena Shanks smiled, drummed her fingers on the arm of the chair, and whispered, “Three. Der war der dritte . . .” She gave orders that all their belongings should be packed. To this purpose, Charlotta Kegoe dragged up two large trunks from the cellar of the house, and everything that was of any value in the possession of Lena Shanks and her entourage was quickly placed inside.

  “Are we going back to Jersey?” asked Rob, as Charlotta was snapping the latches and turning the keys in their locks.

  Lena Shanks shook her head. “We go back to Germany, boy.”

  “Edith go too?” begged Rob, who had grown attached to the child.

  “Louisa too?” cried Ella, fearing that her aunt, who had kept apart from them for almost two weeks now, would not be accompanying them on so great a journey. At least the child must suppose that Germany was a distance; her grandmother’s tone indicated that it was certainly farther from New York than Mantoloking had been.

  Lena nodded. “Ja, ja. Natuerlich, Louisa und Edith auch. Und new clothes fuer alles. Tonight we sail, on a great ship.”

  Rob and Ella clapped their hands in delight, and Edith clapped in mimicking motion and with a mimicking grin, though understanding nothing but that there was some treat in store.

  The remainder of that day was occupied by Rob, Ella, and Charlotta Kegoe in effacing all traces of their habitation from that house on King Street. The mirrors outside the window were smashed with a hammer, and Rob destroyed his grandmother’s wicker chair with a hatchet. Ella took the cushions to the attic, ripped them open with a knife that she carried about with her, and showered the feathers out the holes in the roof. The curtains, as well as all their various disguises, were burnt in the grate by Lena, who sat heavily upon a low stool, with Edith now and then diffidently tossing in a rag or two.

  The rooms of that house: the attic space, Lena’s chamber on the second floor, and Charlotta’s suite on the first, were rendered bare and insipid, without a scrap of paper or cloth to tell how recent had been their occupation. In fine new clothes, the three children sat upon a bench in the hallway, Edith imitating the twins’ patience and silence as she imitated them in everything else.

  One bundle alone was yet to be disposed of, and Charlotta Kegoe and Lena Shanks stood over it in the pugilist’s bedchamber. Helen Stallworth lay wasted and near to death of a fever upon a low sofa beneath the single window of the room. The sunlight burned white upon her hairless head. Her parched lips were caked with dried blood, and her unseeing eyes popped from their sockets. Her stained white shift stank of illness.

  “What do we do about her?” said Charlotta. “The others—the others we’re well rid of, but this one . . .”

  A quarter of an hour later, on Morton Street, Annie Leech looked out of the window of her parlor and saw a great black carriage with curtained windows draw up before the house. Annie motioned Jemmie over, and they watched with surprise and curiosity as Charlotta Kegoe, in sumptuous mourning garb, climbed down, holding across her outstretched arms an angular blanket-wrapped bundle.

  Annie and Jemmie hurried to the front door, opened it and were about to speak when Charlotta thrust the bundle at them, cried, “She asked for you all the time!” and leapt back into the carriage. It was immediately driven off.

  Jemmie, amazed, plucked at the blanket to discover what malodorous gift Charlotta Kegoe had left them, and screamed when a head, bald as a wigmaker’s dummy and quite as colorless, fell out upon her breast and breathed up with a noxiousness that she later described as being like “a volcano of sulfur.”

  Chapter 48

  The Phair household was now greatly reduced in size and consequence. The second maid had been let go, and the cook, whose principal duty lately had been to provide meals for Amy Amyst, Peter Wish, and the mute nurse, left each afternoon by four o’clock. Marian Phair took but scant nourishment, clarified broths and the blandest white breads soaked in milk.

  Duncan Phair had been missing since Saturday afternoon. Judge Stallworth learned that he had taken himself off in high spirits after the arrival of a letter of unknown content, but that neither he nor the five hundred dollars that he carried with him had been heard of since. Judge Stallworth kept this information from Marian, and merely told her that Duncan was on important business in Philadelphia and would return as quickly as possible; but the judge’s unease over his son-in-law’s disappearance was overwhelmed by the revelation of Edward Stallworth’s discovery in the bed of an infantile prostitute in the Black Triangle. The Stallworths knew no end of trouble.

  So that he could be near his daughter, and because he felt unprotected living alone in Washington Square, Judge Stallworth stayed his night
s on Gramercy Park. Peter Wish packed several bags of clothing for him and brought them uptown; and Pompey, now the judge’s sole comfort in life, found new quarters in Duncan Phair’s bedchamber.

  On Friday afternoon at four o’clock, while Edward Stallworth’s suicide was being heatedly discussed the city over, the mute nurse in Marian Phair’s room rang for Amy Amyst. That sounding bell coincided with the cook’s farewell before she departed the house for the day.

  Amy came upstairs, and received a short note from Louisa that instructed her to travel to a little shop very near the Battery Park where she was to procure a specified quantity of a certain medicine; she must insist that this powder be pounded on the spot. Amy wondered why she must travel so far when competent apothecaries abounded on Fifth Avenue, but did not presume to question the directive; instead, she said only, “You know you’ll be here alone, don’t you? Peter is packing the rest of the judge’s things on Washington Square. There’s no one else in the house.”

  The nurse nodded her satisfaction, indicating perhaps that despite her speechlessness, she intended to get along quite well. Amy spoke softly to Marian Phair, who responded not at all, and crept softly from the room.

  A quarter of an hour after Amy departed the house on her errand, a cart, driven by a little Chinaman’s child—half Chinese and half Irish—drew up before the Phair house. Presently and stealthily, two Chinamen with blue quilted caps surmounting the queues that hung down their backs like anchors, jumped out of the peaked tent that was raised upon the back of the vehicle and lowered to the street a great square tea chest. It was painted quaintly over in red, blue, and gold with scenes of domestic life in Peiping and its lid was secured with a large chased brass latch. They carried it up the front steps of the Phair house, but were not put to the trouble of knocking, for Louisa Shanks opened the door and guided the two men to the apartment of Marian Phair.