Things Half in Shadow

by Alan Finn

  “Then he must examine the girl’s body before he leaves. It’s the only way to know for certain.”

  Barclay scoffed at the idea, saying, “That’s impossible. The girl was buried days ago.”

  “Then you must exhume her. Right away.”

  This time, I thought Barclay was going to faint dead away from disbelief. His jaw dropped, followed by the pipe that had been lodged between his lips. Then he stammered, unable to form actual words. Finally, he laughed, hoping I was joking.

  “You’re . . . you’re not serious, are you?”

  “As serious as I’ve ever been,” I replied. “I understand your doubts. If I were in your position, I’d likely feel the same way. But the worst that could happen is that we learn Sophie Kruger really did drown. Or we could learn that she died in the same manner as Mrs. Pastor and that their deaths are indeed related.”

  I could tell from the way Barclay tugged on his mustache that he was actually considering it. I’m certain Lucy swayed him further when she said, “If you don’t do it, I’ll grab a shovel and go do it myself.”

  “Don’t think she’s bluffing,” I told Barclay. “I’ve seen her do far worse.”

  My old friend looked first to me, then to Lucy. Seeing that neither of us had any intention of giving in, he said, “I don’t know why I’m about to agree to this.”

  “Because you believe me,” I replied.

  “Possibly,” Barclay said. “But that’s not much of an excuse to offer when I cart in the corpse of a girl who has just been buried.”

  Knowing that Barclay had faith in me made my heart swell. After our friendship had been strained to the snapping point, we were once again on the same side and working together.

  “Tell whoever asks,” I said, “that you’re helping the man who once saved your life.”

  VI

  If this was a work of Gothic fiction, and not a true account of my experiences, I’d feel compelled to embellish the details of the cemetery into which we crept that night. I’d write about the elaborate tombs we encountered and how a mist as thick as cotton swirled around them. But, since my goal is honesty, I must admit that no such frights awaited us.

  The truth is that Sophie Kruger was buried in an unnamed cemetery on Front Street. Barely a step above a potter’s field, it was a vast meadow of wooden crosses caught in the light of our lanterns, their shadows stretching and bending across the trampled grass. Because the souls resting there had been poor in life, there were no proper family plots or spaces reserved for loved ones. The dead were buried in the order in which they died, the graves filled in one after the other like bricks in a wall.

  When we reached Sophie Kruger’s grave, I saw there were already six fresh ones beyond it—which said a great deal about the city’s mortality rate. Even at that late hour, two gravediggers were busy digging more.

  “Who’s that one for?” Thomas asked them.

  “Don’t know yet,” one of the dirt-smeared men said.

  “But it’ll be filled in the morning by someone,” the other added. “Mark my words.”

  Meanwhile, over at the grave of the Kruger girl, three policemen were performing the opposite job—unearthing a hole that had just been filled in. The trio of policemen, taken off the streets to do Barclay’s bidding, muttered as they stuck shovels into the ground, disgruntled by their task.

  “Can I dig, too?” Thomas asked any adult who would listen. Wide awake now, he circled the grave eagerly, dodging the shovelfuls of dirt being thrown his way.

  “Back away, Thomas,” Lucy told him.

  She was wearing a shirt and trousers borrowed from Barclay. Somehow, she had managed to make even menswear look fetching, as if she wore it all the time.

  Again, I thought about what had transpired between us on the bank of the Schuylkill River. The events between then and now had clouded my perception a bit, and I wondered if perhaps I had misinterpreted Lucy’s intentions. After an ordeal such as the one we had experienced, it was only natural for emotions to be high.

  Either way, it didn’t matter. I had kept my pledge to Violet and Lucy seemed to be back to her old self. What had happened earlier that night was now in the past.

  “Thomas!” Lucy said again. “I told you to leave those men alone. You’re being a pest.”

  Barclay stood next to her, pretending to watch the gravediggers but secretly eyeing her instead.

  “So, Mrs. Collins,” he said, “how is business?”

  “Not very well, thanks to you.”

  “I’m simply doing my job.”

  “And I would like to do mine.”

  “Don’t worry,” Barclay told her. “Business will be back to normal once your name is cleared. In fact, I suspect the notoriety will only benefit you in the end. That is, if your name is cleared.”

  Lucy huffed with indignation. “I assure you, Inspector, it will be.”

  While I knew no good could come from letting the two of them converse, I was too exhausted to intervene. Still trying to recover from one sleepless night, I found myself in the midst of another. By that point, I was so tired I could have lain atop a grave and instantly fallen asleep, not caring if the gravediggers mistook me for a new resident there. Yet I remained standing, trying to keep my eyes open as the policemen emptied the grave and Barclay continued to pepper Lucy with questions.

  “Were you in the Spiritualism business before you came to Philadelphia?”

  “No,” Lucy said. “It wasn’t until Mr. Collins passed away.”

  “And where did you meet Mr. Collins?”

  Lucy laughed—a nervous, birdlike chirp. “It was so long ago, I scarcely remember.”

  Thomas, still circling the grave, looked up at his sister and said, “You remember, Lucy. It was in Baltimore.”

  “Of course,” Lucy said through gritted teeth. “Baltimore.”

  “Is that where you hail from?” Barclay asked.

  “No,” Thomas called out again. “We come from Richmond.”

  Barclay gave the boy a grateful nod. “Son, you have a better memory than your sister, it would seem.”

  Thomas, however, wasn’t listening, for the goings-on in the grave at his feet had consumed his attention. It seemed the three policemen had finally reached Sophie Kruger’s coffin.

  “I see the lid!” Thomas yelped, hopping up and down at the lip of the grave. “Can I be the one to open it?”

  “For the last time, Thomas, get away from them,” Lucy snapped.

  “Can’t I even look inside?”

  “No,” Lucy said. “As you get older, you’re going to see plenty of corpses, and not a one will be pleasant.”

  She was right. I had no desire to see one that night, but it couldn’t be avoided. So while Thomas retreated from the grave, Barclay and I moved in. The policemen used the edges of their shovels to sweep dirt away from the top of the plain coffin. When it was cleared, they hopped out of the hole, content to let Barclay and me do the real dirty work.

  Because lifting the entire coffin from the ground in which it had been interred was difficult, Barclay suggested we move Sophie Kruger’s body to a new coffin waiting on a nearby wagon. While a logical plan, it required lifting the corpse from its pine box and placing it on a length of canvas spread at the foot of the grave. Unlike the digging, that task belonged to Barclay and me.

  The coffin lid had been nailed shut at all four corners and once in the middle of each side. Using the tip of a shovel as a crowbar, we easily pried the nails loose.

  In hindsight, I wish I had prepared myself for what awaited us inside that coffin. Taken a few breaths to clean my lungs, perhaps, or held a handkerchief to my nose. For as I crouched at the edge of the grave, I was confronted by a wretched stench that instantly turned my stomach. It smelled like rotting meat mixed with traces of urine and excrement. The odor burst out from beneath the coffin lid and filled the entire area. Behind us, I heard Lucy cough in disgust while one of the policemen rushed off to discreetly vomit in some nearby wee
ds.

  Cold sweat formed on my forehead and at the back of my neck, and for a moment I, too, thought I was going to be sick.

  “Don’t you dare faint on me, Edward,” Barclay said, his face taking on a greenish hue. “This was your idea, remember?”

  “I know,” I replied. “I hope it’s worth it.”

  “It better be,” Barclay said.

  With that, we lifted the lid, revealing the sorry corpse of Sophie Kruger. Although only in the ground a few days, the change was horrifying. She was no longer the pretty girl I had seen lying peacefully on Pier 49. Now her skin had a purple tint to it, like a light bruise. Her eyes, closed for burial and covered with copper pennies, had bulged open again, one penny now stuck to her cheek, the other somewhere in the coffin’s depths. Her tongue poked out, sluglike, from between darkened lips. The dress she wore was similar to the one she had been found in. Darkened by stains, it already lay loose on her shrinking form.

  “One of us should take the arms,” Barclay said. “The other the feet. Do you have any preference?”

  I gazed down at the emaciated and rotting corpse. “I imagine both are equally unpleasant.”

  “Then I’ll take the hands, if you don’t mind,” Barclay said.

  We got into our positions and, holding our breath against the foul smell, grasped Sophie Kruger’s limbs. Despite the skin around her ankles moving like wet clay beneath my fingers, she was easy to lift.

  The hard part was the stench, which was so overpowering it made my eyes water and my head dizzy. Still, Barclay and I managed to lift the corpse out of the coffin and to the canvas on the ground.

  “Well,” Barclay said, “the hard part is finished. Now to the wagon.”

  We prepared to lift her again, this time holding the corners of the canvas instead of the girl’s limbs. As I bent to pick her up, I noticed that the sleeve of her dress had been pushed upward. The fabric was now bunched at her elbow, revealing a slender forearm the same color as a ripening eggplant.

  “Barclay, take a look at this.”

  Barclay bent down on one knee and held the girl’s arm in his hands. He turned it slightly so it could catch the lantern light, finally seeing what I had noticed.

  “I’ll be damned,” he muttered. “It looks like you were right after all.”

  As Barclay continued to study Sophie Kruger’s arm, the light from the lamp illuminated the skin just beneath the crook of her arm. And in the center of that patch of flesh was a small puncture wound that could only have come from a vaccination needle.

  VII

  That night I slept, if you’ll pardon the expression, like the dead. After such an eventful and shocking evening, I think even the most stolid insomniac would have found sleep. If I dreamt of corpses and ghosts, I didn’t remember it, and for the first time in days, I woke refreshed and energetic.

  Sadly, that lasted no longer than a minute.

  For as soon as I left my bed, I heard agitated voices coming from downstairs. One belonged to Lionel. The other was Mrs. Patterson. Neither seemed to be in high spirits.

  I rushed down the spiral staircase to the kitchen, finding the two of them locked in heated conversation. For a moment, I stayed pressed against the wall just outside the kitchen, eavesdropping on my servants yet again. Peering into the kitchen, I saw Mrs. Patterson with her back to the stove, wagging a wooden spoon in Lionel’s direction. He, meanwhile, had a pair of suitcases on the floor at his feet.

  “I’m fully capable of deciding what’s best for me,” Mrs. Patterson said, spoon slicing the air. “You can keep your opinions to yourself.”

  “Fine by me,” Lionel replied. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you. Mr. Clark’s reputation has taken a turn for the worse, and I refuse to be here when it crumbles completely.”

  “Then by all means, go. But I’m staying right here. Mr. Clark is a good man.”

  “Good?” Lionel said. “You should hear what people are saying about him.”

  “The only person I’ve heard speak ill of him is you,” Mrs. Patterson said with a huff.

  “Well, you won’t hear me much longer, that I can assure you.”

  I chose that moment to finally peel myself from the wall and step into the kitchen. Upon seeing me, Mrs. Patterson lowered her wooden spoon. Lionel, however, lifted the suitcases.

  “Going somewhere?” I asked him.

  “Ah, Mr. Clark,” he said. “Awake at last after another one of your late-night adventures. Did you bring more shame to your name and this house?”

  “Not as much shame as you’re bringing on yourself,” I replied. “Am I to assume that you’re leaving my employ?”

  “Indeed I am, sir.”

  From the stove, Mrs. Patterson piped up with a hearty, “Then good riddance!”

  Lionel sneered in her direction before heading toward me, bags in tow. I jumped out of his way before following him down the hall.

  “Serving Stokely a single brandy distressed you that much, did it?”

  “While a low point of my career, it’s not just that,” Lionel said. “It’s your insistence on ignoring acceptable behavior. First, you let that Collins woman barge in while you’re indecent. Then you become accused of murder.”

  “No one’s accused me of anything,” I interjected. “At least, not outright.”

  “This morning I heard from Inspector Barclay’s butler that you and Mrs. Collins showed up at his house unannounced and soaking wet. With Mrs. Collins in nothing but a petticoat, no less!”

  “It’s not as scandalous as you think.”

  “It’s scandalous enough,” Lionel said with a haughty sniff. “Enough that I don’t want to be associated with you or this household any longer.”

  He was at the front door by then, reaching for the handle while juggling his suitcases. I stepped around him and opened it for him, all too eager to show him the door.

  To the surprise of us both, Lucy was on the other side. Wearing a lavender dress and matching hat, she stood on the front stoop, just about to ring the doorbell.

  “Speak of the devil,” Lionel said. “Emphasis on devil.”

  Lucy’s eyes widened. “I beg your pardon?”

  “You’ll get no pardon from me, miss.” Lionel gave one last look in my direction. “And neither will you. Good luck, Mr. Clark. I feel you’re going to need it.”

  He pushed out the door, brushing Lucy aside as he passed. Then he hopped down the stoop and onto the sidewalk, hurrying as fast as his legs and suitcases would allow.

  “What was that about?” Lucy asked.

  “He just up and quit,” I replied. “I can’t say I’m sad to see him go. I didn’t much care for him. But now I have to find a new butler. Not a pleasant way to start the morning.”

  “Your morning is just starting?” Lucy said. “I’ve been awake for hours. I’ve been very busy. Didn’t get a wink of sleep.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “No rest for the wicked?”

  “More like no rest for people suspected of murder.”

  Much to my relief, there was no unspoken tension between us about the kiss that may or may not have almost occurred on the riverbank. From the way she moved, chin thrust forward and green eyes afire, it was clear Lucy was there solely on business matters.

  “I got my coach fixed during the night,” she continued, “thanks to an admirer of mine who specializes in such things. It’s not pretty, but we need the coach to pay someone a visit this morning.”

  “Who are we visiting? Not Mr. Barnum again, I hope.”

  “A bee expert,” Lucy said. “A devoted customer of mine put me in touch with an entomologist at the University of Pennsylvania.”

  “A what?” I said.

  “Entomologist. He studies insects. He’s agreed to see us this morning.”

  “Why would we need to do that?”

  “Because, while Inspector Barclay is waiting to find out what poisoned the Kruger girl, we can find out how a person might collect enough bee venom to kill someone. Knowi
ng that should make it easier for us to pinpoint who gave Mrs. Pastor the fatal dose.”

  I heartily agreed. Just because we were sharing information with Barclay didn’t mean we still shouldn’t investigate on our own. After all, we had more to lose than he did. Much more.

  That is why, five minutes later, I found myself once again thundering through the streets of Philadelphia in Lucy’s coach.

  The missing door had been replaced with a new, mismatched one. (“I told you it wasn’t pretty,” Lucy said.) The wheels were also new, which allowed Thomas to ride roughshod over seemingly every groove and puddle between Locust Street and the University of Pennsylvania.

  At one point, we hit a hole in the road so roughly that both Lucy and I were lifted out of our seats. We careened into each other, me flopping across the seat and Lucy landing right on top of me.

  Uncomfortably stacked like that, we both tried to twist away from each other as quickly as possible. That only made things worse, for we kept moving in the same direction, our bodies rubbing together. I finally had the good sense to remain still and let Lucy crawl off me. She was all elbows and knees, however, nudging me in the chest, the stomach, the groin.

  “Sorry,” she said, face flushing.

  “Of course,” I replied, at last sliding out from under her.

  We spent a moment in awkward silence, smoothing out our clothes and avoiding eye contact. I aimed my gaze at the floor of the coach, seeing that our altercation had caused something to drop from the folds of Lucy’s skirt.

  I caught only a glimpse of it, but a single glance was all I needed to know what it was—a pistol.

  Seeing the gun, Lucy grabbed for it, but I was faster. Scooping the weapon into my hands, I saw it had a squat barrel and a handle inlaid with ivory. Clearly, it was designed for a woman’s hand, although I wasn’t sure I wanted the one sitting across from me to have it.

  “Where did you get this?” I asked.

  Lucy sniffed her response. “It’s no concern of yours.”

  “Let me rephrase my question then. Why did you get this?”

  She held out her hand, silently imploring me to give her the pistol. I refused. Eventually, she crossed her arms and said, “It’s for protection. In case we run into that noseless man again. Next time, just let him try to run us off a bridge.”