Gilded Needles

by Michael McDowell

  Edward Stallworth’s sermons had attracted much attention, and the size of his congregation and his collections had increased markedly over the past half year. The texts had been reprinted not only in the Tribune, but in the Presbyterian Advocate, the Christian Dawning, and the Cumberland Spectator as well. Among his parishioners now were families from Brooklyn and New Jersey, who ferried across to New York every Sunday morning and raised ire against Edward in the hearts of their abandoned clergymen.

  The dissension that remained in the clergyman’s family was on account of the killing of Daisy Shanks. The incident had been made out by Duncan Phair, the only creditable witness, to have been an act of heroism on Benjamin’s part; it had been reported as such in the Tribune and never thereafter questioned. Duncan had told the judge the true circumstances, and the judge had replied that he was just as surprised to hear that Benjamin was possessed of luck as of real courage. Edward Stallworth had feared at first that the circumstance of his son having shot a woman dead in the streets of the Black Triangle might tell against him, but when this proved not the case—his parishioners unanimously congratulating him on having raised so stalwart a boy—he came to smile indulgently on the act.

  Helen, however, was horrified by the killing, begged Benjamin to tell her that it had been merely a frightful accident. But Benjamin, counseled by his uncle, stood up for his own bravery in the matter, and would not admit his careless culpability. From that moment, Helen became estranged from her brother; and any deception practiced by her upon him and the family that supported him in his shameful pride was a virtuous prevarication. Thereafter, Helen never disabused those in the Black Triangle of the notion that she was the daughter of Mrs. General Taunton; she tried not even to think of herself as a Stallworth.

  August had been spent by the family at Saratoga, in the best hotel, and though their expenses were of the most fashionable proportions, the family concluded that they received full value for their money, if not in accommodation, fare and comfort, then at least in the matter of new and fashionable acquaintance. This was of particular use to Marian, who upon her return to the city in September, was besieged with invitations to dinner, late night parties and opera boxes. Only Helen did not enjoy the month; she had pleaded in vain for permission to remain in the city alone—but propriety would not hear of such a course, and Helen must suffer in luxury.

  The beginning of autumn was an exhilarating time for the Stallworths, and their Sunday afternoon dinners together were happier—or at least less troubled affairs—than they had been in many years. On Sunday, October 1, the family was still gathered around the table, though Marian’s children Edwin and Edith had already been removed to the nursery, when the conversation fell, as it was often wont to fall, to the Black Triangle.

  “Lightner says that we’ve just about exhausted the place,” said Duncan, “and I must say, I can’t help but agree. We’ve been on it now for nine months, and to try to take it even as far as the end of the year would be beating a dead horse.”

  “Oh yes,” said Judge Stallworth, who had already discussed this matter with his son-in-law, “and now it is the question of moving on that must be attended to.”

  “Moving on?” asked Edward Stallworth. This was the first he had heard of the abandonment of the Black Triangle, and it distressed him, for he had expected to continue his sermons with the active support of the Tribune’s researches. “Moving on to what, pray?”

  “To Pell Street, Mott Street. Lightner thinks, and I agree, that we ought to move on to the Chinese question. The new Chinese immigration law goes into effect next month and will doubtless draw attention to the area. There’s bound to be excitement of some sort: murders, bribery, illegal entries into the country. And of course, if there’s nothing else, we can always blow open an opium den,” laughed Duncan.

  “Well,” said Edward Stallworth, “I’m not certain that the Black Triangle is exhausted of its vice, and it seems to me that the Chinese population is so alien a group, what with their outlandish appearance and peculiar ways and unknowable habits, that it will be only with the greatest difficulty that you will stir up any interest in them. The Irish are just as objectionable, and far more populous. I think it might be better if you continued with the Triangle, perhaps taking it from a slightly altered point of—”

  “Yes!” cried Marian, who was more forthright in her objections than her brother. “What’s to become of my committee if you and Mr. Lightner and Benjamin simply walk away from the Black Triangle? My committee is certain to fall apart!”

  “Oh,” said Helen softly to her aunt, “it need not, I think, Marian. There’s still much good to be accomplished in the area, even if it’s not to be written up in the Tribune.”

  Judge Stallworth glanced sharply at his granddaughter, wondering if her mild sarcasm were deliberate. “Marian, certainly not,” he said, “Duncan will insure, through Lightner, that the activities of your committee continue to receive notice in the Tribune.”

  “Oh yes, of course I will,” said Duncan lightly, and smiled at his wife.

  “Well,” said Benjamin, with some of his new-got confidence, “I don’t see why this can’t be eased into, gone into slowly. We could be into the Chinese question before they know we’ve left the Triangle. And I don’t see any reason why the heathen Chinese can’t be used as the subject of a sermon or two. Why, they’re in need of salvation, I suppose, as much as the rest of us.”

  “I think you’re right, Benjamin,” said his grandfather, and Benjamin blushed for the pleasure of the old man’s approbation.

  “Well,” replied Edward Stallworth, “I suppose that I shall have to make the best of it; but please leave me time to study this question of the Chinese before you throw yourselves into the area completely.”

  “Of course, Edward,” said Duncan in a conciliatory manner. “Your printed sermons have proved enormous capital to us, you know, and we have every intention of continuing to publish them. We sincerely hope that you will see fit to assist us.”

  Edward Stallworth, suffering himself to be persuaded out of the Black Triangle and into the Chinese community to the east, had just declared that he must rise and return to the church to prepare himself for the evening service, when the knocker of the front door was sounded.

  The Stallworths glanced at one another in surprise, for late Sunday afternoon was not the time for making calls in New York, except by appointment. Peter Wish was sent to the door and he returned a few moments later bearing, on a silver tray, eight oblong black-bordered envelopes.

  Marian Phair took them all from the salver and flipped through them. “How odd!” she exclaimed. “There’s one for each of us—Edwin and Edith too. Someone’s dead, but who is so stupid as to send out memorial cards to every member of a family? And children never receive mourning cards. It’s unheard of!”

  She took the one directed to her and began to open it. Judge Stallworth took the others, picked out his own, and passed the rest to his granddaughter.

  “Who brought these?” asked Edward Stallworth of Peter Wish.

  “A child,” replied the servant. “A little boy dressed in black.”

  Helen had taken hers, but before she had lifted the flap she glanced at her aunt on the other side of the table. Marian’s hand, holding the envelope, had dropped heavily on the table and she looked about her in pained surprise.

  Helen ripped open the envelope that had her name upon it. Inside was a funeral announcement, a small card of waxed glossy paper, machine-cut on the borders, and representing a young girl weeping over a tombstone in a cemetery with willows. But written across the tombstone in a fine copperplate hand was the legend: R.I.P. HELEN STALLWORTH.

  “Oh!” cried Helen, and the card fluttered to the floor.

  Duncan Phair found an identical card in his, but one which bore the text: ASLEEP IN GOD. DUNCAN PHAIR.

  “Peter!” he cried out, “run after the boy!”

  Peter Wish rushed out of the room, and in the meantime the Sta
llworths at the table stared at the mourning cards in their hands, each of which announced his or her own death. Edwin and Edith’s cards lay beside their mother’s plate, unopened.

  “A poor poor joke,” said Judge Stallworth, and ripped his card in two.

  Chapter 30

  Of the six members of the Stallworth family who sat at the dining room table that first Sunday in October, only Duncan Phair took at all seriously the funeral announcements that had been delivered by a little boy dressed in black. He had by no means forgot Black Lena Shanks’s vow to see three of the Stallworths dead. Duncan watched his father-in-law and, inwardly trembling, tried to match the old man’s annoyance and suggested the names of several persons who might be suspected of so malicious and pointless a joke.

  The others, if they could not entirely dismiss the unpleasant incident, at least did not imagine that the cards had any real import or constituted any actual threat. Edward Stallworth considered that his position as minister of the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church had been impugned, and was incensed against the perpetrator. Marian was outraged that she should be the victim of someone’s morbid witticism and comforted herself with the reflection that someone’s jealousy of her rapid social rise had occasioned the hoax. Helen was shocked to think that anyone could be so callous. Benjamin, so obtuse that he did not align these cards with Black Lena’s curse (which he had kept so secret that he had forgot it), only laughed in perplexed surprise.

  Among themselves, the funeral cards excited much comment and speculation; but outside the family the incident did not become known. Peter Wish alone had seen any of the cards, as he looked over Marian Phair’s shoulder. He was enjoined to tell no one, and he told only the other servants.

  The unpleasantness of the incident soon passed, to all but Duncan Phair; for the mourning cards suggested that the foundation upon which his recent prosperity rested was perhaps not so much to be relied upon after all. His own life in the past six months had been of particular agreeableness, if only for its contrast with the bedeviling insecurity of the time when he had been in danger of being exposed by Maggie Kizer and Maggie Kizer’s friends. His difficulties had ended, he thought, on the day that the two policemen were killed by Black Lena Shanks and her grandchildren.

  Duncan had not told his father-in-law of Black Lena’s vow of vengeance; he had hopefully assumed that the Shankses—all wanted for murder—would be impotent to implement such a scheme. For some weeks he had gone about his business with as much insouciance as he could muster, and had tried to give the impression that all was right with him. Soon, he was himself convinced; and in the time since then, only one thing had shaken his growing confidence. A family of squatters in the north of the city, just where the northernmost cross streets were now being laid out, said that two men had come in a wagon and dug up several graves in the potter’s field. They were not simply resurrectionists, for all the disinterred corpses were discarded except the last, and that one they took away with them. The grave had proved to be that of the West Houston Street abortionist, Daisy Shanks.

  However, since nothing had come of the incident, Duncan forced himself to regard it as a puzzling, inexplicable coincidence.

  Once he had conquered the cloying fear that had beset him, Duncan began to enjoy the benefits that had accrued from his attachment to the Tribune: increased business for the firm, increased respect among his colleagues, and an increasingly amiable homelife. Marian Phair’s opinion of her husband was enhanced by society’s approbation of him.

  Occasionally, of course, Duncan Phair thought of Maggie Kizer; not Maggie as she had been to him, but Maggie where she lay now: moldering in her unmarked grave in the unshaded prisoners’ burying ground on Blackwell’s Island. She was silent and harmless, and he wished her peace.

  Duncan’s relationship to his father-in-law had altered since the revelation of his connection with Maggie Kizer, and Duncan understood that it was not the connection itself to which the judge had objection, but rather to Duncan’s perfidy in keeping it secret from him. It was apparent that the judge, having this once only been disappointed in Duncan’s honesty, had determined never to trust him again.

  Judge Stallworth’s superficial attitude toward Duncan was unchanged: he conversed with him as usual, he sought out his company and advice on legal matters, he did not fail to advise him in all things—but there was a substantial difference, and one that Duncan felt tremendously. The old man’s hopes for advancement had been centered in Duncan, and he had hoped to see his daughter’s husband elected mayor of the city before his death. This hope he gave over entirely, and with an ease that was disturbing to Duncan, the judge resettled his hopes upon a different object—his grandson Edwin.

  “Edwin,” Duncan once overheard Judge Stallworth say to Marian, “is a fine child—I have scarcely noticed him before, but I believe he is a fine child. We may expect fine things from Edwin.” Edwin was occasionally brought to Washington Square—itself an unheard-of indulgence—and allowed to play with Pompey. In the past six months Pompey had actually been three dogs, one male and two bitches, and Judge Stallworth was enormously pleased with Edwin that the child had the good sense and taste not to remark on the alterations in Pompey’s appearance. After being brought one afternoon into the front parlor of his house by Pompey’s bark and discovering Edwin entertaining the dog with a series of elegant handstands executed on the ladder of a flimsy chair, Judge Stallworth began to encourage the child in his athletic and gymnastic prowess. At the child’s behest, this was kept secret from his mother.

  On the Tuesday afternoon following the delivery of the funeral cards, Duncan Phair brought Edwin to his grandfather’s by special invitation. While the boy was romping with Pompey in Washington Square, watched over by Judge Stallworth from his study window, Duncan Phair told his father-in-law of Black Lena Shanks’s curse on the family.

  “I wasn’t trying to keep it from you, you understand. It wasn’t that sort of thing at all. I simply didn’t take the matter seriously. How could I? The family was already wanted by the police, and after the killing of the two policemen they became actual renegades. What harm could such persons do us?”

  “None,” said Judge Stallworth. “Why do you tell me this now?”

  “It occurred to me that Lena Shanks, or perhaps the surviving daughter, might have sent the mourning cards on Sunday.”

  “I think not,” said Judge Stallworth. “I’m rather inclined to follow your initial reasoning: the curse of that woman—as you call it—was sheer impotent rage. We have nothing to fear from that family—what little there is left of it now. Besides, such persons as that never take revenge on their betters—vengeance they reserve for their own kind. I tend to agree with Marian: the mourning cards were the joke of someone jealous of our recent advancements, and that is all.”

  The judge smiled and pointed out the window. Edwin and Pompey had drawn a little crowd just below the great marble arch in the Square. When Pompey stood on his hind legs and barked, Edwin would promptly and obediently execute a flip; and if Pompey barked twice, Edwin would double his maneuver. It was an amusing tableau of reversals, and pleased the judge immensely.

  Duncan Phair was as busy now as he had ever been in his life. The investigations into the Black Triangle had not left off, and the new business of the firm, not all of which could be relegated to George Peerce, brought him early to Pearl Street and kept him there until late.

  On Wednesday, October 4, Duncan did not finish his day’s work until half-past seven, at which late hour George Peerce and the four clerks had left for the day, leaving him alone in the office. He extinguished the lamp, locked the chamber door, tried the other doors, and finally passed out into the hallway. From the top of the stairway leading down into the entrance hall he looked down and saw two women, richly if inelegantly attired, standing on either side of the front door. “Scylla and Charybdis,” he thought to himself. The small ceiling lamp did nothing to illumine their features, for their faces were covered wi
th veils that were overshadowed anyway by their peaked, feathered hats. Both were dressed with unmodishly large bustles and a multitude of flounces and both carried large fringed reticules in the crooks of their folded arms.

  “Yes?” called Duncan from above. “May I help you? All of the offices in this building are closed now, I believe.” He began to descend the steps.

  “Yes,” replied the woman whose dress was dark green. “We’re waiting for Mr. Phair.”

  “I’m he,” said Duncan, pausing at the foot of the stairs. “My offices are up one flight. Why didn’t you knock there?”

  “We’ve particular business,” said the woman whose dress was crimson.

  “It must wait then,” replied Duncan, “for I’m late for my supper. You must come back tomorrow, during regular hours. Please return tomorrow, or at your convenience, and apply to my clerk for an appointment. You may state your business to him.”

  “Our business is with you,” said the woman in crimson.

  Duncan attempted to pass between them, but the two women seized his arms powerfully and flung him toward the staircase. His back struck solidly and painfully against the studded newel post there.

  “What!” he exclaimed.

  The woman in the green dress, whose hands had been hidden behind her reticule, now held them before her as she advanced on Duncan. The nails were more than two inches long, and glinted in the light of the overhead lamp. They were made of brass and had been filed to a slicing sharpness.

  The crimson woman slipped behind Duncan, lifted him from the floor, and held his arms behind him. He struggled to escape, but his thrashings were ineffectual. He had never known so strong a woman before, and the very novelty of being captured by a female deprived him of strength.