by Rhys Bowen
“Here is the Walhalla Hall,” Jacob said. “We should ask if anyone has seen her.”
The hall itself appeared to be in darkness. Jacob stopped several men coming out of saloons and got only rude comments for his pains. “Whatdaya want another girl for when you’ve already got one? Greedy, ain’t ya?” It was most frustrating and after a while we gave up. There was nobody else on the street.
“We should maybe check the café again to see if she came there after I’d left,” I suggested.
“Good idea.”
We walked back along Canal Street.
“That’s Mostel’s,” I said, pointing at the looming dark shape. “There is a furniture maker on the ground floors and Mostel’s occupies the top three.”
Jacob tried the door but it was firmly locked and no lights shone in the building. We walked on to Broadway but the café was closed. So were most of the other businesses around it. Only the theaters were still ablaze with lights.
“Should we try calling her house?” he asked.
“I’ve tried twice. Her maid sounds very worried.”
“Then we must go back along Canal and systematically check each backstreet and alley,” Jacob said.
“But what would she be doing there, at this time of night?” I asked, not wanting to listen to the answer that echoed in my own head.
He shrugged.
“There is one possibility.” I could hardly make my mouth say the words. “I was almost taken by the Eastmans once, until luckily the police intervened. If she was snooping too close to their activities, then maybe they’ve got her.”
Jacob stared at me with a look of sheer dread.
“But that’s something we can’t tackle alone,” I said hastily as I saw Jacob steeling himself to confront a gang. “We’ll have to alert the police. I have a friend who is a police captain. We should let him know right away.”
“But we should search the area first,” Jacob said. “Just to make sure. If we pass a policeman on the beat here, we can tell him and have him spread the word that we are looking for her.” We turned back along Canal in the direction we had come. “Of course, we could be worrying for nothing,” Jacob said, trying to sound bright and confident. “Nell could have arrived at your house by now, at my place, at anyplace as the whim took her. It is impossible to know how her mind works. I have been out on assignments with her before and she has been off in all directions, like a dog chasing a rabbit.” He attempted a smile and I could tell it was himself he was trying to convince, more than me.
I wasn’t sure what we were going to achieve by searching the area. Clearly Nell wouldn’t still be walking around the area alone in the dark and damp. And it wasn’t like Hester and Essex Streets and those livelier areas north of here, where shop fronts would still be open and street life still going on. If anyone lived around here, they had their front doors locked and their blinds drawn. I had to run to keep up with Jacob. He was striding out like a man on a mission. We turned up the first side street and then back to Canal. Singing floated to us from corner saloons. Drunken men staggered past us. Dogs barked. Cats slunk into alleyways. We tried the next side street and the next.
“This is a futile project, Jacob. How can we hope to find her this way? She could be anywhere in New York by now. And if someone had kidnapped her, we could be walking right past and not even know.”
“Don’t say that.” He shivered. “I need to feel that I have done everything I can do. We may just meet a street urchin or a woman of the night who has seen something.”
“All right. Press on, then,” I said gallantly although my feet by now were throbbing. Ladies’ shoes are not made for tramping over cobbles for hours. Pointed toes may be all the rage, but they are not designed for comfort. I glanced down enviously at Jacob’s big workman’s boots.
We passed Mostel’s again and searched the area around it, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. We crossed the Bowery and kept going. Two ladies of the night lurked in a doorway. We asked them.
“We ain’t interested in missing girls, honey,” one of them said. “We only notice if a gentleman like yourself goes past. What’s she done, run away from her old man?” They broke into peals of laughter. We trudged on, discouraged.
We were coming to the place where Canal Street changed direction, after it crossed Division. Surely Jacob didn’t intend to scout it out all the way to the East River? Then suddenly we heard the clatter of boots and two small boys ran past us. I grabbed at one, hoping that it might be one of Nuala’s boys.
“Here, let go of me, I ain’t done nothing,” he yelled in fright.
“We aren’t going to hurt you,” Jacob said. “We’re looking for a lady. We thought you might have seen her around here. A tall lady in black, nicely dressed?”
“Ain’t seen no one like that,” the other boy mumbled.
I glanced down at the object he was attempting to hide behind his back. “What have you got there?” I asked and made a grab for it. He tried to jerk it away and the ostrich plume came off in my hand.
“Where did you find this?” I demanded. “I thought you said you hadn’t seen the lady. This is her hat.”
“We ain’t seen no lady,” the first boy said. “We found the hat on the ground. Finders keepers. We was taking it home to our mom.”
“Can you take us to where you found the hat?” Jacob said. “Then I’ll give you fifty cents as a trade for the hat. Is that fair?”
“Okay, mister. It was down here.” They led back along Canal then down an alleyway where the houses from two streets backed onto each other. There were coal bunkers and all manner of sheds and shacks and outhouses and it smelled bad. We picked our way cautiously in almost total darkness.
“Right about here, mister,” the bigger boy said. “It was just lying here, just like that. Tom kicked it and we thought it was a dead bird or something and didn’t think much of it. But then we saw the ribbon and he picked it up.”
“You’ve been very helpful,” Jacob said. “It belongs to our friend. Here’s the fifty cents. And if you happen to see the lady we’re looking for, tell her where we are, will you?”
“Sure thing, mister.” The boys grinned and ran off with their bounty.
Jacob and I stood looking at the hat.
“She wouldn’t have taken her hat off in this weather,” he said.
“If she was being led away against her will, she might have let the hat fall to the ground as a clue,” I said.
Jacob nodded. “She might indeed.” The words came out as a whisper. We were both whispering. It was that sort of place. “On the other hand,” he went on, “she might be around here—hurt or . . .”
He didn’t need to say any more. We started looking. I wished we had a lantern with us. The darkness was almost complete. We peeked behind coal bunkers and sheds and called her name softly.
“She could have been thrown inside any of these,” Jacob said, his voice rising in annoyance. “Nell! It’s us. It’s Jacob,” he said, more loudly now.
Then there was a sudden breeze. The mist swirled, the clouds parted, and for a moment the moon shone down, throwing grotesque shadows down the alley. And for a second something sparkled. I ran to it just as the clouds came together again and we were plunged into darkness once more. I bent over behind a large coal bin. Then my hand recoiled as I realized what I was touching. The sparkling object had been a buckle on a shoe and the shoe was still on a foot.
Eighteen
Jacob, over here, quickly!”
He rushed to my side and dropped to his knees among the debris. “Oh, Gott. Oh, Gott. Oh, Gott!” he repeated over and over. “Help me, Molly. Move her carefully, she may still be alive.”
I said nothing, but the ankle I was touching was cold. She had been stuffed into a narrow area between the bin and a brick wall and it was hard to get her out. When at last we extracted her, her head lolled like a doll’s, her mouth open in a silent yell of surprise. I shuddered and looked away. Jacob put his arms around me. �
��Don’t look. It is too horrible,” he said. “Who could have done this terrible thing?”
I stood, twisting her bonnet nervously in my hands, then I recoiled as my hand touched something sticky. The outside of the bonnet was wet from the rain. It was the inside that was sticky. I bent to examine her head. Suddenly a bright light shone on us.
“What’s going on here?” a deep voice demanded.
“Thank God you have come, Officer.” Jacob got to his feet. “A young woman has been brutally murdered.”
“So it seems, sir.” The constable came closer, shining the light in our faces. The light was blinding and all I could see of the policeman was the silhouette of his distinctively shaped helmet. “You’d better both step away and put your hands up.”
“We didn’t kill her,” I snapped. “We’ve just found her. She was our friend. We’ve been looking for her.”
“Put your hands up, I said.” The flashlight waved up and down, its beam bouncing from the high brick walls around us. Then the flashlight focused on my hand. The policeman came closer. “What’s that on your hand?”
I looked at it. “It must be blood. We found her bonnet first, you see, and the inside is sticky.”
More feet came down the alleyway.
“Down here, Charlie,” the constable shouted. “I caught the pair of them, bending down over the corpse, they were. Get out your handcuffs.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said as the second officer approached me, handcuffs at the ready. “I have just told you. This is our friend. We have been looking for her all evening because she didn’t meet me when she was supposed to. We feared that something bad might have happened to her.”
“Oh, and why was that, miss?”
“This is Miss Nell Blankenship, from a prominent family,” Jacob said quietly. “You must have heard of her. She writes—wrote articles for the newspapers. I am Jacob Singer. I worked as her photographer.”
“Oh, yes. The lady reporter. I’ve seen her name in the papers. Charlie, run and send a message to headquarters that we’ve got a murder on our hands. And in the meantime you two stay right where you are.”
“We wouldn’t dream of abandoning her,” I said. “We want to find out who killed her as much as you do. And if you think we had anything to do with her murder, you only have to touch her. She has been dead for some time.”
The other constable departed. I was suddenly very cold and hugged my arms to me, shivering. I was very conscious of my fingers sticking together and longed to wash that hand. I still found it hard to handle death and I was overcome with feelings of guilt. If I hadn’t asked Nell to help me, she’d never have been in this part of town. She would never have uncovered a fact that cost her her life. It was too much to hope for that she had left any hint as to what that fact might have been. I tried make myself think like an investigator. I got up and started to search the area.
“Hey, where are you going?” the constable asked.
“I was looking for her purse. I don’t see it.”
“She was probably bashed over the head for her purse. If she was foolish enough to be out alone in this part of town, what can you expect?” the constable said, with the ease of small talk. I decided to remain silent and not let him know that robbery may not have been the motive and she may not have been a random victim.
“What in God’s name was she doing in this part of town anyway?” the constable went on. “She must have known it wasn’t safe for a lady.”
“Nell didn’t stop to think about things like that,” Jacob said. “When she was onto a story, she took appalling risks. She never . . . she wouldn’t . . .” His voice faltered. I reached out and touched his arm.
I was praying, for once, that the police detective who was summoned to this scene would not be Daniel. I really didn’t feel up to facing him or the tongue lashing he would obviously give me. However, the detective sergeant who arrived shortly afterward, with two more constables, was a fresh-faced young man called Macnamara. He listened politely as we told him how we had found her after finding the boys with her bonnet. When we tried to describe the boys, I realized that the description fit every street urchin on the Lower East Side. I was angry at myself for not getting their names, nor for searching them further to see if they had other items belonging to Nell in their pockets. Had they found her purse and stuffed their pockets with anything worth stealing?
“A curious fact, that has been worrying me,” I said. “The boys had Miss Blankenship’s bonnet, and yet the inside of the bonnet is sticky with blood. Doesn’t that indicate it was on her head when she was struck?”
The young officer looked at me with interest. “I wouldn’t expect a young lady to think of things like that.”
“This is no ordinary young lady,” Jacob said. “Miss Murphy is a private investigator.”
I was flattered that he had leaped to defend me, but I rather wished he hadn’t mentioned it. Macnamara stared at me even harder. “Then maybe she can tell me why a well-dressed lady came to be found alone, in this part of the city. Was this some kind of investigation she was carrying out?”
“I rather fear that it was,” I said. “Although I have no idea what brought her to this alleyway.”
“As for that,” Macnamara said, “she may well have been grabbed on the street in full view of anyone who happened to be passing. The types that frequent this area wouldn’t think twice about grabbing her and dragging her into the alleyway—knowing that most folk would pretend they hadn’t seen anything and pass by on the other side. So if her purse is missing, then we have to conclude that robbery was the motive.”
“Which doesn’t make sense,” I said. “She is still wearing gloves and I think I can see the shape of a ring under the leather. Why not take her jewelry too?”
“Someone was coming and they had to beat it in a hurry,” Sergeant Macnamara suggested. “They clubbed her from behind. Her hat came off when they turned her over and they left the hat lying there when they stuffed her into that hiding place.”
“Rather careless, wouldn’t you say?” I asked. “If the boys hadn’t picked up her hat, we’d never have found her.”
Sergeant Macnamara shook his head. “Like I said, they were in a hurry to beat it. Maybe she had a nice fat wallet in her purse and that was enough for them.”
Another constable arrived to tell him that a morgue wagon was ready to transport the body. “I’ll need you to come to police headquarters on Mulberry Street to make statements,” Macnamara said. He didn’t offer us a ride in the morgue wagon, for which I was glad. “Constable Daly will show you the way.”
The original constable escorted us to the end of the alley and then motioned for us to go with him along Canal. As we came to the first cross street I glanced up and noticed that it was Chrystie. Somewhere along that street was the Eastmans headquarters in a building that must have backed onto that very alleyway. I might suggest that line of inquiry when we made our statement.
It was a long weary trudge back along Canal to the police headquarters. We gave them our names and addresses and dictated our statements to a uniformed sergeant. Then we were told to wait. Someone brought us cups of tea which were most welcome. We sat in a small, windowless room, on hard, straight-backed chairs, and waited. Jacob looked around him. “I have been in rooms like this before,” he said. “They would always keep you waiting. There would be screams from other rooms. Sometimes I still have nightmares.”
I wanted to take his hand, but it still seemed too forward. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I dragged you into this. I can’t tell you how badly I feel at this moment.”
“It is I who feels guilty,” he said angrily. “How could I have let her go alone to a place like that? I should have protected her better.”
“You were not her bodyguard, Jacob. And from what I saw she would not have listened to you. She led her own life.”
He nodded. “But it doesn’t ease the guilt,” he said.
“I know. Nothing eases the guilt at
the moment. I feel terrible myself. It was I who sent her there.”
He reached out and took my hand. I was glad it was the other hand, not the one sticky with dried blood. His hand was as cold as mine. We sat there, clutching each other for support.
“At least they don’t suspect us anymore,” I said. “For a while I was scared that—”
I broke off as the door was flung open and a disheveled, wild-eyed Daniel came bursting in. He looked as if he hadn’t slept in several days. His shirt collar was unbuttoned and he wore no tie. “I hope you are finally satisfied,” he shouted. “What have I been telling you all along, and you don’t listen. Did you drag her into one of your crazy schemes?”
Jacob rose to his feet. “I don’t think that’s any way to address this young lady,” he said quietly. “She has done nothing wrong.”
“Done nothing wrong? She insists on poking her nose into things better left alone,” Daniel said. “And who are you?”
“Jacob Singer. A friend of Miss Murphy.”
I saw Daniel’s eyebrow go up. “Is that so?”
“Miss Murphy came to me when she was concerned that Miss Blankenship had not shown up at the appointed time for their meeting.”
“And just what was Miss Blankenship doing in an alleyway behind Canal Street at night?” Daniel spat out the words.
“I have no idea,” I said, staring him straight in the eye. “The only matter in which she was giving me help was finding out details about that missing couple. The couple you were helping me to trace. Katherine and Michael Kelly.”
“Michael Kelly?” he said, still glaring angrily. “The man who met an unpleasant end after getting himself mixed up with the Eastmans? You sent her to investigate that?”
“No, I didn’t. I wanted to find out where Katherine had worked.” I was yelling too, now. “I had discovered that she worked in the garment industry. Nell knew all about sweatshops. She offered to find out for me. And she did find the name of the company Katherine worked for. It was Mostel’s on Canal Street—which explains what she was doing in the area to start with. Why she stayed around after dark I cannot tell you. She scribbled a note to me to say that she had learned something interesting and was going to follow up on it. That’s all I can tell you.”
