The Black Midnight

by Kathleen Y'Barbo

  “Do you think he did this?”

  He paused. “I had hoped we would find something at one of these crime scenes that would sway me one way or another. Unfortunately, my answer is that I don’t know. And that means there’s room for doubt. What about you?”

  “My heart breaks for the Phillips family and for the Hancock girls,” she said. “But I’m torn. Why would either of these men want to kill their wives?”

  “I didn’t know Moses Hancock, but Jimmy had a reputation as a drinker. He and Eula separated a time or two over it. So there’s a possible motive. She was planning to leave him again.”

  “Which we don’t know,” she reminded him.

  “I can only attest to what I saw at the governor’s dinner. Eula did not act like a woman who wished her husband was in attendance. At one point, she actually made a joke at his expense. It made a few of us uncomfortable, but she didn’t seem to care.” He paused. “So if they quarreled, then yes, he could have done this.”

  “You saw what he looked like. Could he have done that much damage to himself?”

  “A drunk man swinging an ax? Yes, he could. If I had to guess how it went down, I would say that they argued, Eula decided to leave him, and he chased her into the yard and did her in.”

  Annie thought about it. “If that is true, then how do you account for the footsteps behind your woodshed and the three missing pieces of wood that appeared at the crime scene?”

  “Footsteps that could have been made by someone else?” he said. “And wood that was retrieved by whomever I set it out for? The fact there was the same number at the crime scene could be a coincidence. It was freezing out, so I didn’t exactly examine the pieces of wood I left in the alley in case I needed to identify them later.”

  “Isaiah, it is dangerous to form a theory then try to prove it.”

  “I haven’t done that,” he snapped.

  She stared until he looked away. “I need a new hotel,” she told him. “Can you recommend one?”

  He whipped his attention toward her. “Why? You are perfectly safe where you are now.”

  “It is one thing to visit during Christmas and another thing to move into the room at the top of the stairs for the duration of the investigation.”

  “Why?” He shook his head. “Because you’re afraid people will talk? Maybe they will realize I love you?”

  Words escaped her. He loved her?

  Ike cringed. Had he really just told Annie that he loved her?

  What an idiot he was to throw that out in the middle of a conversation like it was nothing. Annie deserved better.

  So he pulled the carriage over. Then he inhaled deeply and let it out slowly. After that, he managed to swivel toward her.

  Annie was watching closely, likely forming her own opinion of the matter. Studying him in that way she had of making a man feel like he was under a microscope.

  “All right,” he said. “I have just been very stupid. I shouldn’t have blurted out something that important in that way.”

  “Well,” she said after a minute, “I do not disagree.”

  “And?”

  She shook her head. “I am surprised.”

  “That I love you?” he said.

  “No,” she said softly, “that you admitted it. I thought we agreed not to get involved as long as we were working together. That was your idea.”

  “Yes, I did say that,” he admitted. “And I meant it. I just can’t stick to it, as you might have noticed.”

  She shrugged. “Of course we kissed under the mistletoe, an action which you might have considered to have voided the agreement. I don’t think it did.”

  “This isn’t a business deal, Annie.”

  “No, it’s not. It’s much more important than anything like that. We’re colleagues, Isaiah. Getting involved would just muddy the waters.”

  “We’re already involved. It wasn’t just that kiss. Kisses,” he corrected. “There is something between us that is meant to be. And yes, we are colleagues. That’s easily remedied though.”

  Her eyes widened. “How?”

  “I’ll quit. I can go back to lawyering. Then we’re not colleagues.” He leaned toward her, but her back remained straight, her posture unbending.

  “Don’t be absurd. You would hate every minute of that.”

  “No, I wouldn’t,” he protested, even as he knew she was right.

  “You would, so stop saying that.”

  “All right, then we can both quit.” At this Annie’s brows rose, so he kept talking to prevent a response from her. “We’re a good team. I’ll admit I am fonder of detective work than lawyering, so why not hang out a shingle and open our own agency?”

  “Quit the Pinkertons to take on our own cases?”

  “I know, it might be slow going at first, but we will be fine. We can call it Joplin & Joplin Detective Agency. What do you think?”

  “I think your father will be thrilled that he’s being included.”

  Oh.

  “Well, actually…”

  What? He’d already blurted out that he loved her. He couldn’t just admit that the other Joplin would be her. His wife.

  “You know what I mean,” he managed.

  “Do I?” was her swift reply.

  “Sure,” he said. “I figure if he can come up with that Black Midnight thing, then why not?” Ike set the carriage in motion again, keeping his eyes on the road and away from Annie.

  “I would like to find that hotel now, please.”

  “Annie, don’t. I want us to be together. I think that’s what you want too, isn’t it?”

  “Isaiah, I cannot let you turn your life upside down for me.”

  “Maybe it’s the other way around,” he said. “You don’t want to turn your life upside down for me. I don’t fit into that royal life you will go back to someday.”

  Silence.

  “Are you turning me down?”

  “You haven’t asked,” she said. “If I had?”

  “I am.”

  He slid her a sideways glance and found his fellow Pinkerton detective staring straight ahead. Ike might have argued further, but the likelihood that he would say something else stupid loomed large.

  So he did as she asked, depositing her at the best hotel in town with the promise to return with her things. When he arrived home, he ignored Miss Hattie and went straight up to Annie’s room. Considering she was neat as a pin, it only took him a second to grab her bag and return to the carriage.

  “Where are you going?” Miss Hattie called after him as he stepped out onto the porch.

  “Delivering Annie’s bag to her hotel,” he said.

  His future stepmother stood in the doorway, hands on hips, with that dog of hers a shadow right behind her. “What have you done, Ikey?”

  Ignoring the question and its answer, Ike climbed into the carriage and hurried off before the housekeeper had time to ask anything else.

  The hotel was dressed in its Christmas finery inside and out, with garlands of red and green draped over the arches and twisted around the ornamental posts on either side of the grand double doors.

  A uniformed doorman hurriedly opened one of the doors to let Ike inside. With Annie’s bag tucked under his arm, he marched across the thick-carpeted floor and past the ornately framed paintings, hunting for the first clerk he could find.

  “Miss Annie Walters is expecting this,” Ike told him. “Would you deliver it to her room, please?”

  “I’ll take that.”

  Chapter 22

  Ike looked over to see a well-dressed Englishman, his dark hair lightly streaked with silver, and recognized him immediately as a relative of Annie’s. They shared the same eyes, the same smile, and the same regal bearing.

  The gold signet ring on his hand meant something. What that was, Ike did not currently care.

  This must be the father who had ended her career as a special constable. Instantly, Ike disliked him.

  Depositing the bag on the count
er, Ike turned to face him. The man smiled.

  “You must be Detective Joplin.” He thrust out his hand. “We meet at last.”

  “You have me at a disadvantage, sir,” Ike said. “How is it you know my name?”

  “I’ve hired you for a job,” he said. “And I’ve brought your instructions with me along with a letter from your supervisor.”

  “The captain?” Ike said.

  “No, that would be Mr. William Pinkerton.”

  “I see,” came out on a rush of breath. “And what is it I have been hired to do?”

  He waved away the question. “Oh, it’s all in the packet. Just mind the time. Your train leaves a few minutes after five this evening.”

  Ike looked up at the clock above the front desk. “That’s in three hours, and it is Christmas Day. When was I going to receive this?”

  “I was actually just making the arrangements to have it sent to you.” The clerk in front of him nodded. “I suppose the answer is, it would have been shortly.”

  Ike opened the leather packet, which was emblazoned with his name, and spied one word written across the first page: Classified. The second page contained his train tickets.

  “Boston?” he said.

  “That is your first stop. There are others, but I will let you read all about it in a more secure location.” He gave Ike a sweeping glance. “You do understand this is an assignment you cannot turn down.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong.” He shook his head. “What was your name?”

  He chuckled. “I have a number of them. Arthur Henry William George are my given names. But I would rather you know me by my title.”

  “Your Highness?” he said sarcastically.

  “No, Detective Joplin, Alice Anne’s father.” He nodded to a pair of men in suits standing nearby. “Just so we are clear, they are with me, as are several others I will not point out. And that is just the men who are in the lobby. It would be madness for a man of my stature to travel alone.”

  “Right.” Ike looked over his shoulder at the clerk. “Please go up to Miss Walters’s room and have her come down to the lobby. It is urgent.”

  “I am already here.” Ike turned to see Annie standing nearby. “I see you two have met.”

  “He’s a very nice young man,” her father said. “But not the fellow for you. I’ll give you time to say goodbye, but only just a few minutes. The detective must be on his way. He’s been given an assignment.”

  Annie shook her head. “He already has an assignment, as do I.”

  “According to William Pinkerton, your presence here is unofficial. There are other Pinkertons being paid to look into the nasty business your local madman is up to, and your jobs were to keep the inept men from looking so inept. Am I wrong?”

  “No,” Annie said.

  “For this reason, there is no official assignment on the books for either of you. Thus Mr. Joplin is being dispatched elsewhere, and so are you.”

  “Come with me, Annie.” Ike told her as he linked arms with her and stepped away. The men in suits made to follow, but Annie’s father waved them back.

  “I’m being sent to Boston.”

  “Boston?” She shook her head. “Why?”

  “Your father made a deal with William Pinkerton to hire me. The first of many locations,” he said. “Unless you want to take me up on that business offer. I haven’t told Pop about it yet, so there’s still room on the marquee.”

  The Englishman called to Annie. “I should mention that your assignment is the result of a direct request from Her Majesty to William Pinkerton. There is an agreement upon which your cooperation is required.”

  “Ignore him,” Ike told her. “I love you, and I am pretty sure you love me. If we both quit the Pinkertons, we can continue our investigation here in Austin and maybe help put that monster who is killing women away. Then the Pinkertons and your family will have no say.”

  Annie looked up at him with tears shimmering in her eyes. “You don’t understand, Isaiah. It’s just not that simple.”

  “It is every bit that simple,” Ike said. “Just you and me.”

  “No,” she said. “It can never be just you and me. Granny would never allow it.”

  “I can speak to her. Explain that there is no man on earth who can take better care of her great-granddaughter than me.” He held her by the shoulders, desperate. “Annie, I will go to the ends of the earth to make you my wife.”

  “If my father had anything to do with it, that’s where you would be sent.” She glanced down at the packet in his hand. “Read that carefully, because the ends of the earth may be where you are going.”

  “Let him go now, Daughter,” her father said as he moved near to them. “You know you would never get Granny’s approval.”

  Annie turned around to face him. “Give me some privacy, please, Papa. Just another minute.”

  The Englishman appeared to consider arguing, then thought better of it and nodded. He took several steps back but remained close enough to keep watch.

  “Why does her approval mean so much?” he asked, hating the desperation in his voice.

  “Honestly, Isaiah, if it was up to me, I wouldn’t care. Granny could disapprove and I would be fine. But Papa and Mama and my sister, well…” She glanced over at her father and then back at Ike. “She holds the purse strings. If my father allowed me to marry you without her approval, my family would very quickly become destitute.”

  “You’re exaggerating.”

  She shook her head. “I’m telling the truth. Everything comes from the queen. And with one misstep, that can all go away.”

  “So that’s it then?”

  A tear slid down Annie’s cheek, and Ike caught it with his thumb. “No one will ever love you like I do,” he told her.

  “I know,” she whispered on an exhale of breath.

  Then she kissed him.

  New Year’s Eve 1885

  Chicago

  Six days later, Annie walked into the Prairie Avenue home of Marshall Field and his wife, Nannie, to celebrate New Year’s Eve at the Mikado Ball. Not that she planned to celebrate. The opposite, in fact.

  Annie had barely spoken to her father since she left Austin. It wasn’t his fault, and she knew this, but she had been put in an untenable position. She could either walk away from the monarchy and marry the man she loved or put her selfish feelings aside and do what was best for the family.

  Having been taught from the cradle that honor and duty were her life’s purpose, there had been no question which she would choose. The decision had come at a cost, and Papa knew that when the time was right, she would ask for payment.

  Not in money but in permission.

  His permission to live her life as she wished as long as Granny did not disapprove.

  While her father chatted with the hostess, Annie looked past them to the Japanese-themed room. From the abundant stylized hangings to the bronze stork and miniature pagoda in the center of the room, Mikado, a play that had taken the New York theater crowd by storm, heavily influenced the decor.

  After making polite conversation, Annie separated from Papa to make her way through to the yellow room where two Japanese flower trees had been placed beneath a giant parasol that hung from the ceiling. She felt ridiculous dressed in full Japanese costume, but that had been the requirement of attending.

  And Papa insisted they attend. It was the one thing he requested of her in order to agree to her concessions, the bargain they had struck.

  Annie found a table tucked into the corner and settled there in hopes she might be left to her own devices. Reaching into the overlarge pocket that came with the costume, she retrieved the copy of Little Women she’d purchased once they arrived in Chicago and disappeared into the world of Jo, Meg, and their sisters.

  “Good evening, Annie.”

  She looked up to see Captain Hezekiah Ingram smiling down at her. “Your father told me you were hiding back here. May I join you?”

  “Of cour
se.” Annie put away the book. “How are you, Captain?”

  “Confused, that’s how I am.” He shook his head. “Why didn’t you heed my warning? Did you want to be pulled out of the Pinkertons and hauled back home to England?”

  “Of course not,” she said. “Your telegram said ‘Visit from HRH imminent. He demands to see his daughter. Return immediately,’” she quoted.

  “Exactly. Why didn’t you?”

  “Captain, now I’m confused. The last thing I wanted to do was return to Chicago because my father demanded to see me.” She paused. “I’m sorry I ignored the telegram, but I thought if it was sent in an official capacity, you would have indicated that.”

  “Oh, Annie, you got it all wrong.” He scrubbed his face with his hands. “I did send that exact telegram, but you misunderstood. I meant that you were about to get a visit from your father in Austin and you should return immediately to Chicago to avoid seeing him.”

  Annie sat back and shook her head. “Captain,” she said softly. “No.”

  “Yes.” He paused. “I guess Ike wasn’t happy with all this.”

  “Neither of us were,” Annie said. “But it would have happened eventually. Papa would have tracked me down, and it would have all ended badly. At least this way I can go home and Granny won’t know what I’ve been up to.”

  “About that.” He retrieved a folded copy of a newspaper from his jacket and slid it across the table toward her.

  Annie looked down at yesterday’s copy of the New York Daily Gazette where Cameron Blake’s column had been given front-page attention. “The Lady and the Pinkerton: An Exposé on the Love Story of Crime-Fighting Pair.” She groaned and looked up at the captain. “Has my father seen it?”

  “He has, and so has the queen.”

  “Oh no.” Annie sat back and allowed her gaze to rise to the ceiling and the collection of oversized paper parasols hanging there. “Oh no,” she repeated.

  “Annie,” the captain said gently. “It will be fine. Mr. Pinkerton fired off a firm letter to the Gazette’s owner and sent Her Majesty his apologies. It has been smoothed over. It will be fine.”

  “So you said.” She folded the paper and left it on the table. “I hope Granny thinks so.”