Not Quite Dead

by John MacLachlan Gray

  “No. I am his partner,” the gentleman replied, without a hint of displeasure, rising from his desk. “Bailey is my name.”

  “Bailey—of Topham and Lea?”

  “That is correct, sah.” Not a hint of irony as the gentleman rose from behind the desk and extended his hand.

  “My condolences to you,” said the inspector, “over the demotion, the demise of your employer. “Mr. Topham was a mighty fine gentleman, I’m told.”

  “Indeed, sah. He was like a father to me.” Mr. Bailey paused to light a cheroot. His hand shook as he did so.

  “You seem jumpy, sir,” said Shadduck. “You seem all in a lather.”

  “I am not in a lather, Inspector. I am tired and bereaved. It has been a vexatious week.”

  “I understand you, sir. Any feller in your position would feel peevish. Tell me, Mr. Bailey, are you sensible of anyone with the demency to do such a thing? Was an old malice harrowed up in recent times? Mr. Topham in a scrape—any tattle of that sort?”

  “Mr. Topham was universally respected. A giant in the publishing field. He was in the forefront of American letters. I weep for the culture of America, sah, with Mr. Topham no longer on this earth.” Mr. Bailey exhaled a pensive gust of smoke.

  “High praise for certain,” said the inspector, glancing about the room. “And I see, both here and in his residence, that he had powerful taste in art as well. Of the sort that might be seen in the National Gallery—is in the National Gallery, last time I heard tell.”

  Shadduck abruptly turned so that he might catch the man’s reaction, but Mr. Bailey did not flinch; just a glint of alertness in the eye, enough to suggest that he knew of what Shadduck spoke, that he was not unaware of Mr. Topham’s various illicit activities. And so his praise of the man was all humbug.

  “Yes, sah,” said Mr. Bailey, all too smoothly. “I believe Mr. Topham’s collection is—was—second to none in the county.”

  “And all fraudulent for certain. Like yourself, sir, I am sorry to say.”

  Though he had never particularly enjoyed it, Shadduck knew how to dress down a man, take his story apart, stick in the knife, and get what he needed. A distasteful but necessary technique, one of many such in wartime, when dealing with civilians.

  “I beg your pardon, sah,” said Bailey, and Shadduck noticed that his high forehead now shone in the light from the window. “You have lost me there.”

  “Let us get a thing straight out, Mr. Bailey. You are of the Negro persuasion, are you not?”

  A long pause followed, which the inspector filled by examining the titles on the display table. He wondered what it might feel like, if all the information that lurked within these books were imprinted upon his brain. Would he be better off? Would he be any the wiser? “I have heard of Mr. Poe and Mr. Dickens,” he continued. “‘The Raven,’ I read for certain. Just saying the word Nevermore is enough to frighten children nowadays.”

  “True,” said Mr. Bailey in a sad whisper that told Shadduck he had him by the ball bag. “They are the most well known among the general public. But they are not necessarily the best.”

  “How do you know, sir? How do you know what is the best?”

  “I cannot tell you, sah. I am only a poor black sambo.”

  Another pause followed. Mr. Bailey remained perfectly still.

  “There can’t be many men of color in the publishing business, sir,” said Shadduck. “Not even here in Philadelphy”

  “That is true, sah.” Mr. Bailey leaned back in his chair and smoked his cheroot as though it would be his last, blowing smoke at the ceiling with a half-smile of resignation. It occurred to Shadduck that the faces of Bailey’s ancestors formed that same expression when they glimpsed the slave ships gliding into the harbor.

  The inspector resisted the temptation to cut the tension. If you wait long enough, everybody talks.

  And he did.

  “I was born on a farm near Easton, Maryland, sah. My mother was Harriet Bailey. My father I never met, but believe he was my master, Captain Aaron Anthony. When Mr. Anthony died, I was given to Mr. Auld, whose wife Lucretia broke the law by teaching me the letters of the alphabet. I escaped the plantation with a slave map disguised as a quilt. I obtained the identification papers of a free seaman. I came to Quaker City and was taken in by Quakers. I attended the Negro school on Ninth Street. And now I am here.” Mr. Bailey shrugged, as though none of it mattered now.

  “Well done, sir. I will trouble you no further. Do not hesitate to look me up, if need be.”

  “It seems I am at your mercy, sah. A Negro makes an excellent suspect when none else can be found.”

  “We hope to do better in this case, sir.”

  Outwardly calm but shiny with sweat, Mr. Bailey produced his pocket watch, looked at it, and put it to his ear. “I believe my watch has stopped, sah. Will you give a colored boy the time of day?”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  * * *

  Baltimore

  Ihad never been so close to self-murder in my life—and I had been reasonably close, as you know. There I stood upon Kerr’s wharf with my father’s alligator bag in my hand, staring down at the slimy black water; my immediate plan involved a triple dosage of morphine, followed by a swim in Baltimore Harbor: The morphine would take care of the initial discomfort, and shock would take care of the rest.

  First mother, and now Elmira Royster. Eddie had done it again. He had snatched away the only woman I desired, before I had a chance to compete. Would I never be rid of him? Or was he my doppelgänger, preemptively stealing my life?

  As the Locust Point Ferry approached, I came up with a better idea: I would pay the fare, take my morphine, and fall off the boat. Accidental drowning would be the unchallenged verdict, and I would not end up in the cemetery’s north side, and would not be passed over the fence for burial as a disgrace to the dead.

  As the boat unloaded its cargo, a procession of riggers, sailors, laborers, and calkers passed by: Irish, German, and West Indians, as well as Negroes who worked the shipyards—lithe and enigmatic, eyes cast downward so that you could not see their expressions, making it impossible to tell the free from the enslaved.

  I did not board the ferry to Locust Point, nor did I jump into the sea. What deterred me, in practical terms, was the inadvisability of administering morphine to oneself in public, and the coldness of the ocean at that time of year.

  Instead, I found myself walking up Broadway in the general direction of the cemetery, as though I planned to bury myself and save my heirs the trouble.

  As with my previous flirtation with suicide, it was not to be. For anyone imbued with the work ethic, the problem with death is that it is too easy to achieve. As any doctor knows, most people achieve it with no effort at all.

  And I was hindered by my insistence on thinking of myself as a scientist. In the past few days I had been cast into a whirlpool of doubt and desire which, at the very least, merited attention as a syndrome. It might even enhance my unpublished paper on the forces governing the mind.

  Just as a man will do something because it is the last thing he thought he would ever do, is it possible for a man to feel an emotion simply because it is the last emotion he thought he would ever experience?

  Around the age of fourteen, I walked into the drawing room and saw my father patting Celia the parlor maid, with whom I had been on friendly terms all my life, on the buttock. Upon seeing me, he withdrew in a state of mild abashment after ordering me to my room.

  I wanted to beat my father with my fists, though I did not quite know why. I wanted to tell Celia of my dismay and my disgust. Yet from that day forward, I could not persuade her to look at me when I spoke, and she would leave the room rather than be alone with me. It seemed as though something had broken—as though I had seen or done something that had changed everything.

  From that time on, Father too seemed to go out of his way to avoid me. It was as though there existed a parallel home within the home, a basement theater in wh
ich events took place that were not to be discussed in the parlor, or seen by the children.

  Looking back at relations between the sexes, I see that there were men and there were slaves, and there were also shadow slaves— women willing to minister to a man’s desires, in order to live a bit more comfortably How a marriage fitted into this scheme of things was and is beyond my understanding. Perhaps the existence of slaves created breathing space for the wife, who was likewise the property of the husband, but less owned—if the term can be comparative, or subject to degree.

  Was that how it was between my mother and father? Did she dislike him as much as she had reason to?

  Nonetheless, over the table at the Exchange Hotel I discovered that the system under which I grew up disintegrates when a man desires a specific woman with unprecedented intensity. Far from domination, such a man will bankrupt himself for her amusement, fall on his knees before her, no matter how many slaves he might own.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  City Hall, Independence Square, Philadelphia

  In our civilization … intelligence is so highly honored that

  it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.

  —Ambrose Bierce

  Sell them? Sell a man’s legs and teeth? Whoever is hearing of such doings?” Wendel Grisse stared at the report. His tight features formed an expression designed to make the inspector feel personally at fault.

  Never speak until spoken to, Shadduck’s mother used to say. Especially if the news is unpleasant.

  To Shadduck, the Dutchman appeared stretched to the limit. His skin, once elastic and shiny, had taken on a strained quality, as though stretched from behind the head. His problem was that, like many deeply religious men, he did not wish to hear unwelcome information. Since unwelcome information was precisely the inspector’s purview, the association was on shaky ground, and already Shadduck could sense cracks in the councilman’s support.

  “Heard tell of Waterloo teeth, have you, sir?”

  “Ja. I am minding that they are the famous British dentures. For some reason are they named for the battle.”

  “That is correct. A powerful number of casualties on both sides, sir. Young fellers, many with very fine teeth. A windfall for battle scavengers and denturists.”

  “Pulled the teeth from the mouths of dead soldiers, you are saying?”

  “Not always dead, sir.”

  “Shendlich!”

  “I reckon I know what you mean, Councilman. The Mexican War produced a similar kind of truck. Here in Philadelphy there are mouths full of them soldier’s teeth. I hear S. S. White’s dentures are second to none. ‘America’s Waterloo Teeth,’ I hear they are called.”

  “Greislich!”

  “Spoils of war, sir. Shinbones fetch a fine dollar as well, from jewelers. Ivory bracelets are popular with the ladies in France, don’t you know.”

  “And it is from experience you know this?”

  “I have with my own eyes seen whole fields scattered with toothless, shinless men. Infantry behind it, mostly. A cavalryman wouldn’t stoop to that.”

  “And here in the city of Philadelphia people will buy such a grisly thing?”

  “Trade goods have to come from someplace. With the British impounding every ship with a Negro on board, there’s not enough coming in.”

  “It is unacceptable, this wrongdoing. We cannot have people wearing dead men’s teeth and bones. We are not cannibals, sure.”

  “Not while there are vittles in the market. Food shortages are another piece of calico.”

  “What is this calico, Inspector?”

  “A quilting expression of my mother’s, sir.”

  “One thing I do not understand about you military is your sense of humor.”

  “I apologize. In the field a man grows hardened and rough. Takes time to get a civilized point of view.”

  “So the murderer may be a veteran like yourself. One who is run amok, ferricked, ja?”

  “I reckon that is possible. But there is another wrinkle as to the particulars of this case. Mr. Topham kept a splendid home, sir. Fine furniture, with the marks of the best European makers. Walls hung with art work, authenticated by the classy art houses of London.”

  “There are those who have time and money for artistic work; that is how it should be, sure.”

  “True, sir. Art is a fine thing. What caught our fancy in this case was that the objects was all humbug.”

  “Humbug? What is this humbug?”

  “Counterfeit, sir. Like the soaps and cosmetics and condiments that cannot be had from England at the moment, yet are on sale regardless.”

  “I have not heard of doings such as this before.”

  Shadduck surveyed the room. He had often noted its sparseness— nothing but varnished wood and not a fabric to be seen. A highly polished table serving as a desk, empty but for a pen and an ink blotter, and a ledger of the type used by scriveners. A bookcase containing a Bible, surrounded by works on federal law, state law, municipal law, criminal law, trade law, canon law, natural law, and the law of the sea.

  On the wall above the bookcase—not framed and hung but painted directly on the wall surface—was the room’s only decoration: a starlike thing with a circle around it, that Shadduck knew to be called a hex. A strangely sinister term for something his mother might have embroidered on a pillow.

  “Mr. Topham was a master of fakery,” continued the inspector. “My men traced it all. The furniture was made by a shop in Schuylkill that imitates Chippendales. The paintings were executed by a feller nearby who teaches at the art academy. His students make exact copies as part of their training. After graduation, the paintings sprout certificates of authentication. I reckon every printer in Philadelphy produces a half dozen a year.”

  “The deibel! How is it you have discovered this?”

  “We have informants in the field, sir.”

  Of course. Shadduck’s informants. The councilman winced at the sneakiness of law enforcement today. “You must be arresting these wrongdoers at once. Especially the students we must punish, as an example for the young people.”

  “Arrest them, sir? On what charge?”

  “Are you saying that this too is lawful activity, like your book pirates?”

  “Something powerful close to it, sir.”

  “Fraud is not a crime without victims. There must have been complainers, for sure, people who were fooled into buying this humbug.”

  “No, sir. Complaining would not be in the victims’ interests. As an asset, say for borrowing purposes, once they are exposed as fake the pieces ain’t worth dirt.”

  “But the artists who have been copied surely must be complaining.”

  “That might be, sir. But none of the artists are Americans. Like Mr. Topham’s books, the fellers who made them ain’t covered by copyrights. There was no actual physical theft, don’t you see, sir? The Reynolds, the Frith, the Herring are still in the galleries where they belong.”

  “Inspector, you have seemed to become very much the connoisseur of English art.”

  “I took on a young man at the Academy to inspect the murder scene.”

  “Another of your informants, he was?”

  “And well versed in European collections, sir.”

  “You are being free with the tax dollar. I hope you are exercising diligence.”

  “I have kept a complete set of records, sir. You may be certain of it.”

  “I see. Sure, it would be a terrible thing if it were known that the houses of our best citizens are full with swindles. It is ferfowled at the highest level.”

  “What is that, sir?”

  “It is rotton! It is ferfowled!“

  In his mind, Shadduck made a note to tread gingerly on the topic. Grisse’s outrage frequently led to baseless crackdowns against new “criminal elements” that were known to everyone but Grisse, in which nothing was accomplished and people suffered for no good reason.

  At the same time, Shadduck sens
ed a possibility that the councilman might see the Topham matter as an election issue, a crime issue, in the way that one invests in a mining venture for a quick return. If that were the case, the inspector had much to gain by entering into a spirit of reform.

  “Something else lends the matter urgency, sir. It is the involvement of the criminal gangs.”

  “You mean by this groups of men who do criminal things, yes?”

  “Not necessarily, sir, but you are generally correct.”

  “But if it is publishing of books, what makes them necessarily criminals?”

  “I don’t understand your question, sir.”

  “These are smart people sure, and we are in favor of smartness. Ferfowled it may be, but if that is lawful practice I might invest in the business myself.”

  “I reckon you are right that fakery is no great shakes—excepting when blackmail comes into it.”

  Grisse grew wary. “What is this blackmail you say?” Having been in politics for several years, he was not unfamiliar with the word.

  “As my mother used to say, Man is the only animal that can be skinned twice.”

  “I am not understanding your mother.”

  “Sir, Mr. Topham had a hand in other tricks of the craft. Birth records, university diplomas, truck of that sort. No way in tarnation can we verify them, sir. Whatever piece of paper a man holds up, he simply cannot be proven wrong—except, sir, by the forger himself. There, I reckon, is your potential for blackmail. A man whose life is a forgery, who then makes his fortune, makes a handsome quarry for blackmail, sir.”

  “Wery astute. And what are you making of it?”

  “I calculate that Mr. Topham kept records, sir. After all, he was a man of the written word.”

  “Sheisse. A book of names Topham had, you are suggesting?”

  “I reckon so, Councilman.”

  “You are saying that prominent Philadelphians are open to blackmail, ja?”