by Alan Finn
I should have known that was a possibility. In fact, I should have been one of those very same reporters, hounding any policeman I saw for details. The news left me stunned. I stumbled backward, as if trying to stay upright in the face of a raging headwind. This would not only tarnish my reputation as a journalist, but also as a future member of the Willoughby family.
“Rest assured, Edward, that I will make every effort to clear your name immediately,” Barclay said.
But that wouldn’t matter to those at the Public Ledger or the Times or even those colleagues at the Bulletin who had regarded me with such envy that very morning. I was certain every effort would be made to associate me with Mrs. Pastor’s murder for as long as possible. There was no riper target for other men of the press than a fellow reporter shamed.
“What am I supposed to do in the meantime?” I asked, wincing at how helpless I sounded.
“Just stay home and out of sight,” Barclay instructed. “This will pass within a day or so.”
“That’s easy for you to say. You’re not the one accused of murder.”
Shifting his weight from one leg to the other, Barclay popped the pipe back into his mouth before placing his hands on his hips. When he sighed, smoke snaked out with it. He resembled an agitated bull, huffing and puffing. I would have found it comical had I not been so angry with him.
“Edward, no one has accused you of anything. You’re about as likely to commit murder as I am.”
“Then announce my innocence at once,” I demanded. “Find those reporters and forbid them from mentioning that I had anything to do with her death.”
“You know I can’t do that. For now, I need to treat you as I would any suspect.”
In truth, I had expected more from Barclay, and not just because I had saved his life all those years ago. I thought our friendship would be enough to make him mount an immediate and strong defense of my character, to cause him to rally around me. That he hadn’t disappointed me greatly. Even though I knew he was only doing his duty as a member of the nation’s oldest police force, I couldn’t help but feel betrayed.
Without saying another word, I went inside, leaving Barclay alone on the street. I slammed the door—the only retort I could muster—and climbed the stairs, feeling only exhaustion.
The depth of my anger should have kept me wide awake.
In truth, the opposite happened. I was so weighted with concerns that my entire body wound down, like a tin toy that needed cranking. My legs got heavier. Not even toothpicks would have kept my eyes open. For a moment, I wondered if I’d even make it up the steps, let alone into my room. I did, but barely. And when I reached the bed, I collapsed onto it facefirst, immediately plummeting into sleep.
VI
In the morning, I was awakened by sunlight yawning across my ceiling. I yawned right along with it, feeling more relaxed than I had in days. Tangled among my sheets, I enjoyed a blissful moment suspended between sleep and wakefulness. It didn’t last long, of course. There’s no way it could have. Before I knew it, all my thoughts and worries crashed over me like ice water thrown from a bucket. I sat up, recalling everything from the day before. The pale man with no nose. The flying table. The fact that I was a murder suspect.
But the thought at the forefront of my mind, the thing that concerned me most, was the newspaper. I needed to get to it before anyone else in the household did.
I sprang out of bed, heart palpitating. Since I had spent the entire night in my clothes, I traded one foul-smelling, wrinkled suit for a clean and pressed one before running downstairs. Lionel met me at the bottom.
“Good morning, Mr. Clark. Your breakfast is in the dining room. I took the liberty of pouring your coffee.”
Food was the last thing on my mind, seeing how my stomach was knotted with worry.
“Where’s the newspaper?” I asked.
“Which one?”
Like any journalist worth his salt, I read several newspapers, morning and evening editions. I paid a neighbor boy to bring them around twice a day.
“Any of them,” I said, flustered. “Or all of them.”
“Mrs. Patterson took the Inquirer,” Lionel replied. “You know how she likes the—”
I didn’t wait for him to finish, instead hurrying to the kitchen, where I found Mrs. Patterson slicing carrots to make a soup for lunch. A pot bubbled on the stovetop, and I felt exactly like the soup it contained—simmering with anxiety.
“The newspaper?”
Mrs. Patterson waved her knife in the direction of the small table where she and Lionel had their meals. “It’s over there. But I haven’t had time to read the—”
Again, I didn’t listen. Instead, I ran to the table and grabbed the Inquirer, which had remained untouched. The front page contained the headline I was dreading to see: MEDIUM WAS MURDERED.
Holding my breath, I scanned the article, stopping when I saw my name in print.
Chief among the suspects is Mr. Edward Clark, a writer for the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. Just yesterday, Mr. Clark wrote grandly about having witnessed Mrs. Pastor’s demise, never once mentioning that foul play was involved or that he would be implicated in this heinous deed.
Of course, I hadn’t expected a rival newspaper to make an attempt to spare my reputation or give me the benefit of the doubt. Still, it made me furious. I stormed to the stove, opened it up, and tossed the newspaper inside, taking great satisfaction in watching it turn to ash.
“What in heaven’s name are you doing?” Mrs. Patterson shouted. “I wanted to see the—”
I marched out of the kitchen and into the dining room, where two more newspapers sat on the table next to my untouched breakfast. Taking them in hand and returning to the kitchen, I threw those into the fire as well. Satisfied that every newspaper in the house had been destroyed, at least until the evening ones arrived, I departed for the offices of the Bulletin.
Mr. Hamilton Gray, whose copy of the Inquirer I was unable to toss into the fire, of course had read the article that practically accused me of murdering Lenora Grimes Pastor. In a rare display of journalistic ethics, he announced it wouldn’t be proper for me to continue writing about her death. He then suggested, much like Barclay had, for me to “hide under a bushel” until the police could uncover her real killer. I had no choice but to heed his advice. I was, at least for the time being, no longer employed at the Evening Bulletin.
I took my time walking home, shuffling over the sidewalk, a man shamed. In a single morning, I had gone from the toast of Philadelphia to the talk of it. It was humbling, to be sure.
During my walk, I made an attempt to ponder the bright side of the situation, which did exist, luckily. I knew that money wouldn’t be an issue, no matter how long it took for this to blow over. The fortune amassed by my parents and inherited from my aunt sat safely inside Girard’s Bank. Quite honestly, I didn’t need to work another day in my life.
And that was the problem. I enjoyed work, toil, using my hands and my wits to make an honest living. I looked at men of the carriage class—men such as Bertram Johnson—and felt superior because I knew I was a cog in the machinery that kept Philadelphia running. There was value in that.
But now I didn’t even have a job to call my own. Without it, I had no purpose. Days, perhaps even weeks, of boredom stretched before me, full of solitary dinners and evenings confined to my bedroom. I imagined becoming so bored that I’d seek employment from Violet’s father, overseeing a squalid workroom of laborers constructing Willoughby hats—a dreadful prospect. Even death would have been preferable to such a fate.
By the time I reached home, lunch hour had arrived. Since I knew Lionel and Mrs. Patterson would be eating in the kitchen, I tiptoed through the front door and tried to make my way upstairs, too ashamed to face them. Their name was only as good as their employer’s, and at that moment, he was being thoroughly dragged through the mud.
In the foyer, I passed a small table that contained a vase, a lamp, and a silver tr
ay. Sitting on top of the tray was a white envelope. A calling card, addressed to me. Whoever it was from, I didn’t want to see them or anyone else. Not for a very long time.
Sneaking to the main staircase, I got as far as the first step before overhearing Lionel, his voice rising from the kitchen. It was clear they already knew about Mrs. Pastor’s death.
“It’s a disgrace, no doubt about it,” Lionel said. “Doesn’t surprise me, the crowd he keeps company with. Those coppers coming by at all hours to take him to one corpse or another. I’ll wager seeing all those murder victims pushed him off his rocker.”
“He ain’t been found guilty yet,” Mrs. Patterson replied. “There’s nothing for him to be ashamed of.”
“If I’m ashamed then he better well be. I wanted to work in a respectable house, with respectable people. Now I find myself working for Edward Clark, the butcher of Locust Street.”
Instead of continuing up the stairs, I pressed against the wall and inched closer to their conversation. Yes, I was blatantly eavesdropping, but not just because I was the topic of discussion. Their voices sounded strange in their informality—cocky, boisterous, unrefined. It made me wonder if Lionel and Mrs. Patterson often discussed me when I was gone and, if so, that this was how they always sounded.
“That Pastor woman was poisoned,” Mrs. Patterson said. “Mrs. Brill, the new cook at the Douglas place, told me so this mornin’.”
“So he’s the poisoner of Locust Street. It still makes us look bad.”
“I worry about Miss Willoughby. Such a lovely girl. This is going to be hard on her. That engagement of theirs won’t last much longer, I imagine.”
“I could have told you that before this even happened,” Lionel said. “What with that Collins woman now barging in here all the time.”
My eyes widened at the mention of Lucy Collins, who to my knowledge had been here only once. Yet Mrs. Patterson’s response—“What did she want this time?”—told me how wrong I was.
“She wouldn’t say,” Lionel said. “Just demanded to see Mr. Clark. After yesterday, I was ready for her. No way was I going to let her knock me down and search the house twice. I told her to leave a card, like a real lady would do.”
I inched my way back toward the table in the foyer and removed the envelope from the silver tray. Taking great pains to open it as quietly as possible, I looked inside and saw a handwritten note.
I must see you. Christ Church Burial Ground. Two o’clock. Come alone.—Lucy
According to my watch, it was already one. Part of me knew I needed to stay home and ponder what I was going to tell Violet and her family later that evening. Yet another part of me insisted, quite rightly, that it would be torture to remain cooped up inside while the servants gossiped downstairs. Certain I wouldn’t be able to stand hearing Lionel call me the so-and-so of Locust Street one more time, I slipped out the front door, as silent and invisible as a ghost.
BOOK FOUR
The Most Ridiculous Notion I Had Ever Heard
I
Christ Church Burial Ground was a patch of land between Arch and Market streets, slightly northeast of the Pennsylvania State House. I passed that building, which in a few years would be renamed Independence Hall, on my way to the cemetery. As usual, it was a lively area, crowded with visitors lining up to touch the Liberty Bell, on display in the Declaration Chamber.
The cemetery was the complete opposite, as silent and still as the dead buried there. Mrs. Collins’s coach was parked outside, with Thomas at the reins. While the horses shared a sack of oats, he occupied himself by puffing on a pipe as large as his fist.
I considered greeting the boy, but thought better of it. It wasn’t inconceivable of him to dump the pipe’s smoldering contents atop my head. So I hurried through the cemetery’s wrought-iron gate, seeing Lucy standing before the grave of Dr. Benjamin Franklin. She wore a dress of black and white stripes, a black hat circled by white ribbon on her head. The dual colors made her look simultaneously festive and somber—a woman only partially in mourning.
The sight of her caused my heart to beat just a little bit faster. It was similar to the way any man’s pulse quickened at the sight of a beautiful woman, yet also different. For while Lucy Collins was indeed a ray of light in the otherwise somber cemetery, I had a feeling the slight racing of my heart had more to do with anticipation. I didn’t know what she wanted or what she was going to say, a fact that left me both eager and fearful.
Yet she smiled when she saw me. A good sign, I thought, considering our last conversation.
“You came,” she said. “I wasn’t certain you would.”
“I wasn’t certain I should,” I said.
“Yet here you are.”
“Indeed. Now, would you mind telling me why I’m here? It was my assumption we were never going to meet again.”
“Our circumstances have changed, wouldn’t you agree?”
Lucy took my arm and led me deeper into the cemetery. We traversed the path that bisected it, not stopping until we reached its end, near the back wall. Lucy only spoke once we traded the path for grass, the verdant blades swiping the hem of her skirts.
“Your friend the police inspector paid me a visit this morning,” she said. “He told me that Mrs. Pastor was murdered.”
“It’s true. Poisoned.”
“Inspector Barclay also told me, in no uncertain terms, that I am suspected of the crime. From the way he spoke, I get the sense that I’m his only suspect.”
She said this with such indignation that it was clear she didn’t see the logic of it. Yet how could she not? She was a fake medium who visited a competitor who later died. Now, knowing Lucy as I did, I couldn’t put the idea of murder past her. Yet I also knew that at the moment of Mrs. Pastor’s death, Lucy had been trying to stanch the flow of blood from P. T. Barnum’s head. She was certainly not the figure I saw approaching Lenora Grimes Pastor in the darkness.
“Don’t worry too much about that,” I said. “I’m a suspect as well. So is everyone else who was with us in that room.”
“I could care less about them. I’m concerned about myself.” Lucy paused before swiftly adding, “And you, of course.”
“I had assumed this wouldn’t affect you very much.”
“Your assumption was wrong,” she said. “I’m a businesswoman, aren’t I? My business lives or dies by my reputation. And with my reputation gone, there are far too many other mediums in this city who will take my lost business. Oh, if only the rest of them would drop dead as well!”
Being in her presence again reminded me of how vibrantly annoying she could be. Beneath her veneer of properness, she was as rough as sandpaper running against the grain. Take, for example, how she leaned against the nearest gravestone, insouciant as a schoolgirl.
“You’re violating someone’s final resting place,” I told her.
“But he’s dead,” Lucy said, removing herself only long enough to read the name etched into the stone. “I doubt Commodore Thomas Truxton minds. If I were under there, I’d be all too happy to let the good commodore lean on my grave.”
My patience, already worn thin, all but evaporated when Lucy resumed leaning on the gravestone and said, “I blame you for all this.”
“Me? You’re the one who wanted to visit Mrs. Pastor.”
“We wouldn’t have been there if you weren’t determined to expose mediums in the first place.”
At that moment, I’m certain there wasn’t a beet in Philadelphia as red as my face. The nerve of that woman! I wanted to tell her that she certainly didn’t need to blackmail me nor did she have to become a swindler in the first place, but I was too flustered. All that came out of my mouth was a single, unintelligible noise that sounded something like, “Gah!”
Lucy’s eyes widened and her mouth formed a perfect, mirthful circle. She held a gloved hand to her mouth, trying to halt the torrent of laughter about to arrive. Instead, it only muffled the sound.
I couldn’t help but laugh,
too. It was either that or throttle her right there in the cemetery, and I was in enough hot water. So we both let our laughter rise in the burial ground until it echoed off its brick-walled border. When it subsided, Lucy pressed a hand against her flushed cheek and said, “Oh, Edward, what are we going to do?”
Despite my anger, I found myself softening upon hearing her use my first name. “There’s nothing we can do but wait until our names are cleared.”
“There has to be a better alternative than that. What if you wrote something in the Bulletin proclaiming our innocence?”
“As of this morning, I no longer write for the Bulletin,” I said. “At least not until the matter of Mrs. Pastor’s death is settled.”
Rather than expressing sympathy, Lucy’s response was a frustrated, “Well, we must do something.”
“We will be found innocent,” I said. “It may take a day or two, but Inspector Barclay will discover who did this to Mrs. Pastor.”
Lucy removed herself from Commodore Truxton’s headstone and resumed walking through the cemetery, aimless and anxious. “We can’t simply wait and hope our names will be cleared. That could take weeks, perhaps years. I won’t have a customer left if it takes that long. And think of your beloved Miss Willoughby. Eventually, she’ll get tired of being engaged to a murder suspect and find someone more suitable to marry.”
“What do you suggest we do?” I asked.
“We clear our names by ourselves.”
“And how might we do that?”
“It’s simple,” Lucy said. “We combine our efforts and solve Mrs. Pastor’s murder.”
I replied with another outburst of laughter, one so loud and forceful I was certain it could be heard even by the dead who occupied that hallowed ground.
“It’s not as ridiculous as all that,” Lucy said.
But it was. The two of us playing detective! It was the most ridiculous notion I had ever heard. Neither of us knew the first thing about solving crime, especially one as heinous as murder. We’d be entirely out of our element.
