Dead Ringer

by Kat Ross

  Klara shifted uneasily. “About that, I cannot say. But she claimed Declan told her his spirit would not rest until she took revenge on James. It was not enough to kill him. He must be made to suffer.”

  My heart beat faster. “This is the part I still don’t fully understand,” I admitted. “How did Emma know about doppelgängers?”

  Klara stared at us without a shred of remorse. “I told her stories when she was a child. Stories from the old country. The same my own mother told to me when I was wicked.”

  John’s eyes narrowed. “You terrified her, you mean.”

  “Children must be raised with a firm hand.”

  “And that story scared her the most, didn’t it?”

  “Emma had a vivid imagination. I caught her staring into a mirror once, just staring and staring. When I came up behind her, she startled and dropped it. The mirror shattered into pieces.” Klara’s lips curled. “I told her each piece held her wicked twin and they would all come after her if she didn’t go read her lessons immediately. The girl went white as a ghost.” She sucked her teeth ruminatively. “But it worked. She stuck her nose in a book and didn’t take it out all afternoon.”

  John and I exchanged a look of mild horror.

  “Emma demanded to know how to summon a doppelgänger for a specific person. I told her they were simply stories, but she wouldn’t accept that. She said she’d stop paying for the home and I’d be out on the street.”

  Klara stopped talking for a moment, her rheumy eyes staring out the window. Neither John nor I moved a muscle, hardly daring to speak.

  “I was frightened. Emma frightened me. The way she looked at me . . . . So I told her about a woman I know,” Klara said at last. “A German girl. She helped me with my arthritis, but I’ve heard she helped others, too. With darker requests. She knows all the old lore. God help me, I told Emma where to find her.”

  “And you didn’t warn James?” John demanded. “He would have paid your room and board!”

  “Emma said she would see me dead,” Klara replied softly. “That she would crawl in my window some night and put a pillow over my face and snuff the breath from my lungs.” The old woman turned to John. “She’d do it, too. The girl is disturbed. I had no choice. And I didn’t expect it to work. Not really.”

  “Tell us where this woman is,” I said quietly.

  Klara’s chin jerked in my direction. “I just wanted her to go away,” she said plaintively. “To keep paying.”

  “Well, she unleashed something that’s going to kill James unless we stop it. Do you understand?”

  Klara Schmidt gave a small nod. “I will tell you the name and address.”

  John pulled out his notepad. “Just to be clear, this is a witch we’re talking about?”

  She mumbled something that sounded like hex. “Her name is Hannah Ferber. She lives in Little Germany. I will tell you the address.”

  John wrote it down.

  “She mustn’t know I told you,” Klara said. “She’ll come here—”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure you’re kept safe,” I said.

  Klara reached out and grabbed my hand. Her eyes were frightened. “I didn’t think it would work. Tell James that.” She took the rosary from around her neck. “Give him this. For protection.” She folded the chain into my hand.

  “I will, Miss Schmidt.” John and I rose to our feet. When I looked back from the doorway, she was staring out the window again.

  At the front desk, I flashed my S.P.R. badge at the attendant and told him not to allow anyone inside Klara’s room, especially not Miss Bayard.

  “But she pays the bills,” he said with a frown.

  “We don’t care,” John replied sternly. “You’re not to let her in. The police will be arriving soon to post a guard outside her door.”

  “For that old bird?” he asked in astonishment.

  “Klara Schmidt was the sole witness to a serious crime years ago. It’s just now coming to trial,” John said. “If anything happens to her, you wouldn’t want to take the blame for it.”

  “No, sir! I’ll inform the rest of the staff immediately.” Mr. Forsythe bounced on his toes, practically bursting to share the news. It must be the most exciting thing that had happened at the Association for the Relief of Respectable Aged Indigent Females in years.

  “I must admit, it’s an ingenious way to kill someone,” I said as we stepped outside. “Murder by proxy. Emma’s hands are clean. In fact, she was in Newport when those poor boys started dying.”

  John shook his head. He looked disturbed. “Maybe I oughtn’t, but I feel sorry for her,” he said. “Declan Moran sounds like a beast. God only knows what he did to seduce her. It might even have been rape. She could have gone mad. Convinced herself she loved him.”

  “I doubt we’ll ever know,” I agreed. “But it certainly sounds like he preyed on a vulnerable woman. One with childhood trauma and a morbid imagination that was fueled by Klara Schmidt and her horrid bedtime stories. She raised Declan, too, and look how he turned out. What an awful nursemaid.”

  “Klara wasn’t precisely evil.” He absently tucked the end of his scarf into his overcoat. We had started walking downtown along Amsterdam Avenue and a gritty wind blew straight into our faces. “But I wouldn’t want her watching our children, Harry.”

  I stopped. “What did you say?”

  “I wouldn’t want her watching my children.” A flush crested his cheekbones. “If I had any, of course.”

  “No, you said—”

  “We have to tell Moran,” he interrupted. “Wait, scratch that. Oh God, he’s going to murder them, Klara and Emma both. We’d better call in the Night Squad.”

  “Not yet,” I replied stubbornly. “I promised. And we can’t prove anything, not that would stand up at trial. Emma’s lawyer would laugh us right out of the courtroom. Which is all the more reason to find this witch. If Emma paid her money believing she could kill Moran, perhaps they can be charged with conspiracy.” I paused for breath. “Besides which, if it became known that I betray my clients, no one would ever hire me again.”

  John shot me a look. “I thought you still worked for the S.P.R.”

  “I do, but Kaylock threatened to suspend me. I don’t think he wants to, but he said he might not be able to protect me from Orpha Winter.”

  “Well, Moran already sacked us.”

  “I bet he’ll un-sack us when he hears what we have to say,” I replied dryly. “It’s his only chance. I doubt Emma will tell him, if she even knows.”

  “And if she’s at the house?” John asked. “When Moran finds out, he’ll snap her slender neck.”

  I quickened my steps. “Better we’re there to stop him, then.”

  The Moran mansion was only a twenty-minute walk south. A young maid answered the door. She seemed agitated, her hands kneading at her skirts.

  “Is Miss Bayard at home?” I asked.

  “No, Miss Pell, she went out.”

  I found myself glad we didn’t have to face Emma; one lunatic at a time.

  “Do you know where she went?” John asked.

  “She didn’t say, sir.”

  “What about Mrs. Moran?”

  “In her room.” The maid paused. “I tried to wake her, but she won’t stir. She’s awful pale. There’s sick on the floor. I was about to call the doctor—”

  “I’ll look in on her,” John said. “Where’s your master?”

  “Second floor music room, sir.” Anxious tears formed in her eyes. “Has been for hours. I knocked and knocked but he won’t come out.”

  “Where are the other servants?”

  “Miss Bayard dismissed them.” She sniffled. “It’s just me, sir. I didn’t know what to do—”

  John said quietly to me: “Go rouse Moran. Keep him occupied, but don’t tell him anything yet.”

  I nodded and we parted ways at the landing. John continued up to Tamsin’s room with the maid and I walked down the hall to the music room. The gas jets
flickered as I gave a hard rap.

  “Moran?” I pressed my ear against the heavy door.

  I heard a creak inside, as though someone had shifted in a chair.

  “I’m coming in,” I said firmly. “Your mother is very ill.”

  There was no reply – and that worried me the most. Whatever poison ate away at the family, there was no doubt in my mind that Tamsin was the single person in the world he truly loved.

  I tried the knob, expecting it to be locked, but it turned in my grasp.

  The drapes of the music room were pulled shut and the only light spilled in from the hall. All the furniture had been pushed against one wall except for a single chair positioned in the center of the room. I breathed a sigh of relief as I saw Moran occupying the chair. He must have been sitting there in perfect darkness before the door opened for the lamps were unlit.

  “Moran?” I ventured.

  He turned so his face was in profile, a shadowed silhouette.

  “We found Klara Schmidt.”

  I thought he’d rant at me for poking into his affairs after he had terminated our contract, or leap up and demand answers. But he had fallen into some profound melancholy for he hardly reacted at all.

  I entered the room and looked around. “I haven’t a clue how to light those gas jets. Don’t you have a candle somewhere?” I moved cautiously through the semidarkness and finally located a melted stub on his desk next to a box of matches. “John Weston is here. He’s seeing to your mother.” I lit the candle and the shadows fled. “That’s better. Now listen—”

  He turned fully to me and I took a step back. His eyes gleamed, darker than a moonless night, yet his face seemed soft. The guardedness and arrogance was gone. It was Moran’s face, but unformed somehow, like a child.

  “James?” I whispered, the candle wavering in my fist.

  He didn’t reply, only stared at me, and the hair on my neck rose straight up.

  I glanced at the heavy, gilded mirror on the wall. A vacant chair sat in the middle of the room.

  My pulse leapt as footsteps rang in the hall. I spun around and John walked through the door with the real James Moran at his heels, rubbing his eyes as if he’d just woken from a deep sleep. I turned back to the room and its jumble of furniture. This time, the chair was truly empty.

  Moran took one look at my face and knew. “It was here, wasn’t it?”

  I nodded, my heart still pounding.

  “Inside the house.” His voice was eerily calm. “That’s the first time it’s come inside. Did it speak to you?”

  I shook my head.

  “Let’s get out of this room,” John said sensibly. “There’s more we have to tell you.”

  We went down to the drawing room and John ordered the maid to light a fire in the hearth. He poured three stiff whiskeys from the sideboard and handed them out. I guessed he was trying to soften Moran up before he broke the news about his aunt.

  “I was napping in the spare room with the door locked,” Moran muttered. “It seemed . . . safer. Are you sure Mother will be all right?”

  “She took too much laudanum,” John said. “Or it was given to her. Thank God she emptied her stomach. She’ll be fine with a little—”

  “Wait.” The word cracked like a whip. “What do you mean, or it was given to her?”

  John and I looked at each other. He murmured something almost inaudible that sounded like, “Here we go.”

  I cleared my throat. “We found Klara Schmidt.”

  “What?”

  “She’s in a home uptown for the aged and infirm. She told us some things, but you have to promise not to—”

  “What did Klara say?” The words came out low and measured and hard as frozen ground. His black gaze bored into me with unnerving intensity. I was very glad John was there with me.

  Well, she said your father was a monster.

  She said you killed him with a clean shot between the eyes. An execution, she called it.

  She said your mother was a drug addict who was cuckolded by your aunt.

  And she said that same aunt coerced her into finding a black witch to kill you in the worst way she could conceive of.

  “Well?” Moran demanded. “Tell me!”

  In the end, I opted for the short answer.

  “It’s Emma,” I said simply.

  The glass slipped from his hand and rolled across the carpet. Moran stood and walked to the mantel, turning his back to us. I could hear him breathing hard through his nose. “Are you sure?”

  “Beyond any doubt.”

  He didn’t ask why. Some part of him must have suspected, but he didn’t want to face the truth – that his father had managed to destroy the family even beyond the grave.

  “Do you know where she went?” I asked.

  Moran shook his head, a tiny gesture. He stood very straight, his hands loose at his sides. I looked at the neatly clipped hair at the nape of his neck and thought of Emma stroking him there in a mockery of a lover’s caress the last time I stood in this drawing room.

  For a long moment, Moran said nothing. I almost wished he would erupt and get it over with. The arctic chill radiating from him was worse.

  “There’s a woman named Hannah Ferber,” John said. “Klara said she’s a witch. She either summoned the doppelgänger or told Emma how to do it.” He paused. “She lives down in Little Germany.”

  Moran’s head whipped around. “Dutchtown?”

  That was what the Irish immigrants of the Five Points called it. “We need to bring in the Night Squad,” John said.

  “No,” he growled. “I’ll handle it myself.”

  I sighed at his mulishness. “Moran—”

  “It’s my life. If you send in the bloody cavalry, she’ll clam up or disappear.” He gave a wild laugh. “Don’t you see, I have nothing left to lose.” Moran stabbed a finger at me. “It came inside the damned house.” An evil light entered his eyes. “Give me the address. I’ll deal with her.”

  “And if we refuse?”

  “Then our deal is off,” he said harshly. “Either you still work for me or you don’t. It’s time to choose!”

  “At least let us come with you,” I said. “We’re trained to deal with such things.”

  “And we don’t want you killing the woman outright,” John muttered under his breath.

  Moran gave a brusque nod and strode away, bellowing for the maid. Minutes later, he bundled a disoriented Tamsin and the serving girl into a hansom cab, instructing the driver to take them to the Fifth Avenue Hotel at Madison Square.

  “Check her into a suite,” he ordered the white-faced maid. “I’ll see you have some bodyguards to watch the door.”

  We trailed Moran to the stables, where a tousle-haired boy with missing front teeth sat on a bale of hay gnawing at an apple core. He leapt to his feet when he saw the master of the house.

  “Where’s the groom?” Moran demanded. “I need the carriage hitched up.”

  “Miss Emma gave him the night off,” the boy squeaked.

  A dull flush darkened Moran’s hollow cheeks. “Can you manage it alone?”

  The boy squared his shoulders and tossed the apple core aside. “Yes, sir.”

  “Then do it. And I’ll need to you carry messages for me when you’re done.”

  The lad hopped to it. We stepped out of the stables and waited in the immaculately tended garden behind the house. Moran regarded us with a wary expression.

  “I fired you,” he said. “Why didn’t you let it go?”

  “I had to find out the truth,” I replied simply.

  “You’re just like her,” he muttered, running a hand through his hair.

  I guessed he meant Myrtle. “Listen, it doesn’t matter now. Klara Schmidt needs protection. Emma might go after her. Can you send some of your boys to watch the Association for the Relief of Respectable Aged Indigent Females? It’s on Amsterdam Avenue and Ninety-First Street.”

  He nodded. “What do you know about black witches?
”

  I looked at John. That would be his jurisdiction.

  “I’m far from an expert,” he said, “but practitioners of the left-hand path, meaning sorcery for evil purposes, are cunning and powerful. They’re accustomed to persecution and protect themselves with charms and amulets. I’m not familiar with German witchcraft per se, but I imagine it’s similar to the rest of Europe. The accusations might be a tad bit overblown: infanticide, cannibalism, pacts with the Devil—”

  “Get to the point. Is there any way to protect ourselves?”

  “I was just coming to that,” John replied with a hint of coolness. “Garlic, salt, anything made of iron. All are used to ward off spells, especially the evil eye.” He squinted. “I don’t suppose you have a wolf’s head lying about? Or a live rooster?”

  Moran stared at him.

  “No?” John said blandly. “We’ll stick with a salt cellar and some cloves of garlic then.”

  Moran looked at the house. I could see he didn’t want to go back in there.

  “Wait with him,” I told John. “I’ll look in the kitchen for supplies.”

  I glanced into the stable. The boy was hitching the second horse to its harness. It stamped and snorted and he soothed it with a gentle hand.

  “What if Emma returns while we’re out?” John asked.

  Moran gave a terrible smile. “I hope she does,” he said. “I’d like very much to have a chat with her.”

  Chapter 14

  Moran drove like a maniac, racing the horses down Broadway as fast as the rush hour traffic allowed.

  It thickened as we passed through the classier parts of the Tenderloin, where electric lights lit up the theater marquees and well-heeled crowds queued in front of the box offices. I thought for a minute of Danny Cherney and his mud man — almost with nostalgia. They seemed positively innocent compared to Hannah Ferber and her dark spellcraft.

  “What else do you know about witches?” I asked John, chewing on a fingernail.

  “First off, there’s different sorts,” he replied, tipping his Homburg back on his head. “Good ones and bad ones.” He paused. “I’d say it’s a safe bet this is a bad one.” Another pause. “Very bad.”