by Alan Finn
“This here’s a nice house, Mister Clark,” he said after taking a sip. “Your butler does a nice job.”
I nodded my thanks, wanting only to ask if he had decided to help me. Still, courtesy dictated that I engage in small talk with the giant of a man filling the wing-backed chair across from me.
“He missed some cobwebs in the corners, though,” Stokely informed me. “You need to look for those every day. Them spiders spin webs like a house a’fire.”
“I’ll be sure to tell him that.”
“How long has he been with you?”
“Not very long,” I said. “Three months.”
Stokely chuckled to himself. “No wonder there’s cobwebs in them corners. What’s his name?”
“Lionel.”
“Nice name.”
“Your name is interesting as well,” I told him. “Is that your surname?”
Stokely halted his snifter midsip. “My what?”
“Your last name. Or is it your first?”
“It’s my only name. My mama didn’t give me a proper last name, seein’ how she and my daddy wasn’t married. They been callin’ me Stokely for as long as I can remember.”
I leaned forward, my interest in Stokely’s reason for paying me a visit momentarily eclipsed by another one of his personal stories. “Why is that?”
“ ’Cause I was brought up in the kitchen, stokin’ the fire in the stove as soon as I could walk. When I was sent to the fields, the name went with me. Didn’t matter none that I was pickin’ cotton. They still called me Stokely.”
He stopped, no doubt wondering if he should have shared that much with me. It’s possible he thought he shouldn’t be there at all. He was, after all, someone else’s servant, relaxing in the parlor of a man who was practically a stranger. And while it wasn’t my intention at all, it dawned on me that I had made him uncomfortable.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It seems that all I do is ask questions.”
“You do,” Stokely said, taking another sip of brandy. “But I think it’s ’cause you have a curious mind. You like findin’ things out.”
“That I do.”
“Which is why I decided to help you. I spoke with Mister Pastor. Told him you was a decent man. He said he’ll talk to you.”
The news left me overjoyed. I not only had the chance to get more information about who might have killed Mrs. Pastor, but Stokely’s confidence in me signaled that yet another person was convinced of my innocence. Robert Pastor, after all, wouldn’t have agreed to be in the same room with me if he thought I had killed his wife.
“I can’t begin to tell you how grateful I am,” I told Stokely. “When should I come by?”
“In the morning. I’ll tell Mister Pastor you’ll be there about eight.”
Stokely finished his brandy in two mighty gulps. Thus fortified, he left the parlor, tipped his hat, and stepped once again into the chilly night.
I finished my own drink while thinking up questions to ask Mr. Pastor. Chief among them was why he had ordered an examination of his wife’s body. But others came to mind, as well. Ones that I hoped wouldn’t drift away during my slumber.
I needn’t have worried, though, for I barely slept that night. My dreams were once more haunted by the ghostly images of old, departed friends. Davies, Cole, and Duncan were there again, along with a parade of others whose names I’ve forgotten but whose faces I’ll remember forever.
All of them marched wearily through my bedroom, just as they had during their previous invasion of my dreams. This time, though, their presence was more pronounced. As they emerged one by one from the wall, it felt as if each of them had truly just stepped into the room.
They said not a word as they crossed in front of my bed. They merely marched, as if returning from a battle that had been sorely lost. As each of my friends passed, I called out their names in my sleep.
“Cole! It’s me, Clark! Duncan! Do you hear me, Duncan?”
They moved on—either unable or unwilling to address me—and finally slipped wordlessly through the wall to my left. Yet more arrived after them. Dozens more. One comrade, who died having his gangrenous foot amputated, moved with a pronounced limp, his left shoulder dipping low with each step. Another, killed when a cannonball landed mere yards away from him, retained only half his face. When he stared at me, it was with one piercing blue eye. The other was nothing but an empty socket.
When the last soldier made his retreat into the wall, I thought the nightmare had ended.
I was wrong.
For bringing up the rear of that gruesome parade was Lenora Grimes Pastor. Unlike the others, she paused for a moment at the foot of my bed, watching me with those intense eyes of hers.
Then she opened her mouth and a honeybee emerged from her pale, cracked lips.
BOOK FIVE
Uninvited Guests
I
Robert Pastor didn’t appear to be a man in mourning.
Most people who lose a spouse look as if part of their soul has died as well. Gray faced and sickly, they gaze at you with deadened eyes while refusing to eat a bite.
By contrast, the rosy-cheeked and jovial Mr. Pastor seemed to be as healthy as a bull. As for his appetite, well, not even the death of his wife could dull it.
Because of the early hour, he suggested I have breakfast with him. Even though I had eaten at home before leaving, I agreed. What choice did I have? Only instead of the light meal I was accustomed to, breakfast at the Pastor residence was a stomach-busting feast. Biscuits with butter and jam. Eggs and bacon. Fried potatoes. Fried fish. Several slices of ham. Robert Pastor relished it all.
“I met Lenora nine years ago,” he said before biting into a chunk of ham and washing it down with coffee. “A physician friend of mine told me about her father. I was a salesman, you see.”
“Of medical supplies?”
“Yes. He thought Mr. Grimes might be in need of my wares.”
Forgoing the dining room, we ate at the kitchen table as Stokely and the mute maid Claudia cooked and cleaned and made multiple trips to the cellar. Meanwhile, the food kept coming, even though I had barely touched what was already on my plate. I mostly partook of the coffee, which nonetheless did little to wake me up after my sleepless night.
“You’re not eating, Mr. Clark,” Mr. Pastor remarked after Claudia set a plate stacked high with bacon in front of me. “Aren’t you hungry?”
“Not particularly,” I replied. “Although this is quite a feast you’ve set out for us.”
“The one thing we never skimp on around here is food. Even Quakers need to eat.” Robert Pastor patted his ample stomach and laughed. “And it’s rather obvious that I eat a lot.”
“Were you always a Quaker, Mr. Pastor?”
“No, sir. I became a Quaker through marriage. Not a very good one, I might add. I prefer to have a few more creature comforts around me.”
My gaze floated around the kitchen, taking in the new stove, the elaborate sink, the icebox that Claudia opened and closed as she gathered even more food to prepare.
“Such as this kitchen, I suppose.”
“Oh yes,” Mr. Pastor said, a noticeable twinkle in his eye. “I didn’t care if the rest of the house was as plain as a post as long as we had a proper kitchen.”
“It must have cost a pretty penny.”
“It did, sir. Quite a lot. My wife, bless her soul, was against it, but I overruled her on this particular issue. We had the money for it, after all.”
Because Mrs. Pastor’s religion dictated that she live plainly, I wondered just how much money was in her name. Money that, now she was dead, would be passed to her husband. Robert Pastor was clearly a man with an appetite. If his desire for wealth was as strong as it was for food, I imagined he’d go to great lengths to get it. Maybe even murder.
“It must have been hard for you,” I said. “Having all that money and not being able to use it.”
“Not necessarily,” Mr. Pastor replied, a glisten
ing slice of bacon pinched between his thumb and forefinger. “It’s not as if we were living like paupers. We spent that money well enough, I can assure you. Gave a lot of it to Lenora’s favorite causes. That Quaker school was her latest project.”
He bit into the bacon with a satisfied crunch.
“So you never argued about money?”
Stokely came to the table, giving me a quick shake of his head as he placed a bowl in front of Mr. Pastor. His message was clear—I was being too nosy.
“I’m afraid I’ve forgotten my manners. That’s none of my business,” I said, turning my attention to the bowl, which was heaped high with grits. A square of butter sat atop the pile, melting into yellow ooze. “I see you hail from the South.”
“The grits gave it away, did they?” Mr. Pastor dug into them, not caring that he continued talking with his mouth full. “I can’t help it. Reminds me of home.”
“Where are your people from?”
“North Carolina. The coast. I plan on moving back there once all this business with Lenora’s death is through.”
I looked down at my still-full plate, suddenly reminded that, insatiable appetite aside, Robert Pastor had lost his spouse. She had been murdered, right before his eyes. Some acknowledgment of that fact had to be paid.
“Mr. Pastor, I hope you believe me when I say this. I swear I had nothing to do with your wife’s death,” I said. “By all accounts, she was a kind and caring woman, and her death is a tragedy.”
My host scooped up another spoonful of grits, holding them before his mouth. “I appreciate you saying that. It’s mighty kind. And, no, sir, I do not believe you are the person responsible for Lenora’s death.”
“Then you must have an idea who is.”
“An idea, yes. But not a certainty.”
“Have you informed the police about this?”
“Of course,” Mr. Pastor said.
His response caused me immediate bewilderment, which was quickly followed by anger at William Barclay. Despite being my best friend, Barclay had lied to me when he said the investigation was at a standstill. He knew all along the focus of Mr. Pastor’s suspicions.
“I told them all about it when I requested that my poor wife’s body be autopsied,” Mr. Pastor added.
“I’m curious about that. Why did you request an examination?”
“Because, Mr. Clark, in the days before her death, my wife’s life had been threatened.”
I looked up from my plate, surprised. “By whom?”
“Unfortunately, I don’t know.”
“Then what makes you think a threat had been made?”
“Because I believe I witnessed it,” Mr. Pastor said as he leaned back in his chair, mug of coffee resting on his ample gut. “Something strange happened a little more than a week ago. I remember that it was a Saturday morning, exactly a week before Lenora’s death.”
“What happened, and how was it strange?” I asked.
“I usually spent my Saturday mornings strolling through Fairmount Park while my wife held a private séance.”
Robert Pastor didn’t tell me who the private séances were with, nor did he need to. I already knew about Eldridge Dutton’s regularly scheduled appointment. Yet that isn’t who Mr. Pastor saw when he arrived home.
“When I returned from my stroll,” he said, “I found my wife in the sitting room with a gentleman dressed in black. Normally, I wouldn’t have thought anything of it. Many old friends of Lenora’s would come by to sit a spell and chat. But this was no friend. I could tell by the way they talked.”
“Were they arguing?”
Mr. Pastor shook his head. “Their exchange was calm, but I detected tension. From what little I heard, of course. They stopped talking almost as soon as I stepped through the door. When I inquired if anything was wrong, Lenora told me that all was well. The man in black—I never did get his name—departed shortly thereafter. But Lenora was bothered by the visit for the rest of the day. She seemed lost in thought. Troubled, you know? Later that night, I again asked her about the man’s identity. She told me he was a clergyman who, because of her apparent gifts as a medium, feared for her soul.”
“It was a theological debate, then?” I asked.
“Apparently so,” Mr. Pastor said. “But he was the most frightening-looking clergyman I’ve ever seen. Yet even more frightening was what happened the very next day. That’s when Stokely found a letter left on our doorstep.”
“What sort of letter?”
“A threatening one,” replied Mr. Pastor. “It was brief—just a single sentence. ‘Join us or pay the consequences.’ Then later that week, on Friday, a similarly worded letter arrived. This time, however, it included a postscript: ‘This is your final warning.’ ”
“How did your wife react to these messages?” I asked. “Was she fearful?”
“I didn’t tell her about them. I know I should have. I just didn’t want to cause her any undue worry. But now—”
Mr. Pastor set down his coffee cup and pushed away his plate. For the first time that morning, I saw a man wracked with grief.
“You wonder if you should have brought them to her attention,” I offered.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “Or to the attention of the police.”
“And you think these threats came from the man you found speaking with your wife?”
“Clergyman or not,” Mr. Pastor replied, “he looked like someone capable of doing harm. His face was horrifying.”
“How so?”
A bud of unease formed in my chest, slowly blooming as Mr. Pastor described a man who had pale skin (“As white as chalk”) and dark, cold eyes. The nervous bloom got worse when he told me how thin and angular the stranger’s face was. By the time he got to the man’s missing nose, which marred the center of his face like two bullet holes, the fear had blossomed fully, and I found myself trembling from the top of my head to the toes of my feet.
If I had closed my eyes, I could have seen his terrifying visage staring at me in the reflection of a shop window. His black eyes. His sneering mouth. His nose that was nothing more than two dark wells burrowing into the pale surface of his skin.
But I didn’t close my eyes. Fearful of remembering that horrid face, I kept them open as I said, “I, too, have seen that man. I saw him this past Sunday morning. He seemed to be following me.”
“Perhaps he knew you had attended my wife’s final séance.”
About that, I now had no doubt. The main question was how he knew I had been there. Yes, my name was on a widely read article about her death, but it was doubtful a stranger could pick me out of a crowd just from that alone. Besides, my encounter with the noseless man occurred before my words had been put to print.
“Let’s say this man did indeed threaten your wife,” I said. “Even if he had, he certainly didn’t kill her. He wasn’t at the séance.”
“I have a theory about that,” Mr. Pastor replied. “One I’ve told the police about, as well.”
I leaned forward, eager to learn more. “Which is?”
“That this pale man was only working for someone,” he said. “Someone who really was at the séance. Someone who then killed my dear Lenora.”
“That doesn’t leave too many suspects,” I replied. “And it’s doubtful any of us had a deformed henchman working for us.”
“I can think of one person who might employ such a man.”
Robert Pastor didn’t need to say anything more. I knew he was referring to the one man at the séance known for hiring, and even exploiting, such people. The one man whose very name summoned up images of the freakish and the bizarre.
“Of course,” I said, angry with myself for not thinking of it sooner. “P. T. Barnum.”
In theory, it made perfect sense. It wasn’t hard to imagine P. T. Barnum employing someone as strange as the noseless man. Nor was it too difficult to think Mr. Barnum would send such a malformed person to perform bits of dirty work, such as intimidating a medium. S
ince Barnum was present at the séance, it wasn’t much of a leap to conclude that he was the one who had poisoned Lenora Grimes Pastor.
Yet two things cast doubt on Mr. Pastor’s theory. The first was P.T. Barnum himself. Despite being known for unrivaled braggadocio and the uncanny ability to understand what entertained the common masses, he was, by all accounts, a devoted husband, a generous philanthropist, and a staunch abolitionist. In other words, not the type of man you’d think capable of murder.
The second seed of doubt was due to Mr. Barnum’s location at the moment of Mrs. Pastor’s death. Occupied at the time with putting out the fire on the floor, I hadn’t kept track of his whereabouts. Yet someone else had. Before I dismissed Mr. Pastor’s suspicions entirely, I needed to speak with that person.
And, despite Barclay’s warning to steer clear of her, that meant another visit to the home of Lucy Collins.
II
I found Lucy in the room where she conducted her bogus séances. It looked the same as the last time I’d seen it—dim, sparsely decorated, a round table in the center, and a fraudulent spirit cabinet along the wall.
The only difference was that, instead of bells under glass, the table now held several musical instruments. I saw a small drum, a wooden flute, a pair of circular objects that resembled wooden clamshells and, in Lucy’s hands, a bugle. A string, one end wound tight around the bugle’s mouthpiece, stretched into the ceiling.
“Stealing a few ideas from Mrs. Pastor?”
“She doesn’t need them anymore,” Lucy said. “But once my name is cleared and customers return, I will.”
“Or you could find a more honest profession,” I replied. “Armed robbery, perhaps. At least then your victims know they’re being swindled.”
“The last thing I need from you, Edward, is another lecture.” Lucy set the bugle on the table, bell side down, and turned to the spirit cabinet. “Try it now, Thomas.”
