by Alan Finn
“What’s going on?” he asked, voice thick with sleep.
Lucy raised her lamp, casting a circular glow on the foyer walls. In the middle of it, like characters in a pantomime, loomed our two shadows.
“Nothing,” she told Thomas. “Mr. Clark came by unannounced to discuss a few things.”
“Do you need me to take care of him for you?”
Lucy’s voice turned warm. “No, Thomas. Everything is fine.”
She shot me a quick look, fearful yet bossy. She wanted me to say something as well.
“Nothing’s wrong, Thomas,” I called. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
We heard the boy’s feet pad away from the stairs, followed by a sleepy, “Good night, then.” When he was gone, Lucy grabbed my arm and dragged me into the séance room. She set the lamp on the table and shoved me into a chair before taking one opposite me. It was exactly like our first argument—just the two of us facing off in an empty room. Fitting, really, for what I assumed would be our final disagreement.
Once again, a palpable tension filled the room, although it was heavier than the initial animosity that had run between us. Most of it stemmed from our appearances. Beads of water continued to drip from my rumpled clothes and pool around my feet. Lucy remained in nothing but her nightgown, modesty the furthest thing from her mind.
Yet there was more to it than that. We now had a shared history—of conversations, of bickering, of peril. There was an understanding between us, and the frisson it created sizzled through the air like heat lightning.
“Would you mind telling me,” Lucy said, “what the hell has gotten into you?”
“I came to my senses,” I replied. “Now answer the question. Did you kill Declan O’Malley?”
Lucy leaned forward, palms pressed together, as if she were in prayer. Her breath came out in ragged gasps.
“Before I say anything, I want to thank you, Edward. For your friendship and your trust in me. And I assure you that I didn’t kill Mrs. Pastor or that Kruger girl. You must believe me about that.”
“I’ll consider it only if you tell me the truth about Declan.”
Lucy clapped a hand to her mouth, clearly torn. Her eyes darted nervously as her palm pressed further against her lips. It gave the impression that she was physically trying to halt the words about to come out of her mouth. But then she pulled her hand away and let them be released.
“I met him when I was fourteen,” she said. “He worked on my father’s farm. A big man. Rough. But I was drawn to him. Drawn in that intense way only young girls can be. Girls like Bettina Dutton, who think they know everything when in fact they know nothing.”
“Did your parents approve?” I asked.
“Of course not. But I didn’t care. They told me to end things with him or leave their house. I chose to leave. So Declan and I went to Richmond. We scraped by for a while. He was a laborer. I did wash from time to time. We lived in a rented room above a dry goods store, telling the landlord that we were man and wife. I insisted that we get married, and Declan promised me we would, just as soon as he saved enough money. But there never was any money. He drank it all away. And when times got leaner, he drank even more.”
“But did you kill him?”
Lucy reached into the bodice of her nightgown, removing a strand of beads around her neck. Her rosary. Hanging from it was a wooden cross. Fingering the cross absently, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
“Yes, Edward. I killed Declan O’Malley.” She huffed lightly—a surprised exhalation at her confession. “I’ve never said those words aloud before. I didn’t think they’d sound so—”
“Guilty?” I suggested.
Lucy shook her head. “Liberating.”
“But you don’t regret it?” I asked. “You killed a man.”
“I did. A wretched, horrible man. A man who did this.”
Taking her hands way from the cross around her neck, Lucy pushed up the sleeve of her nightgown until her left forearm was visible. There, situated between wrist and elbow, was a patch of dark red skin. I had seen enough similar marks during the war to know it was a healed burn wound.
“He did that with a scalding-hot iron,” Lucy said. “Because I was trying to earn money doing someone else’s wash instead of making his dinner.”
She stuck out her right leg, lifting the nightgown’s hem until I could see a crimson line just above her knee.
“That was from a hot fireplace poker. As were these.”
She stood and turned around, lowering the collar of her nightgown further until all of her left shoulder and part of her upper back were exposed. I saw three more slashes of red. Three more places where the poker had seared her flesh.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I had no idea.”
“Of course you didn’t.” Lucy pulled the nightgown back into place. “Men never know what some women go through. They never know the beating and the cussing and the brutal humiliation.”
“No woman should have to endure that.”
Lucy stared at me, lips pursed, eyes fiery. “But they do, Edward. All the time. Everywhere.”
“Then those women should leave. Run away, as you should have done.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“Why?” I asked. “If Declan treated you so badly, why didn’t you just leave him?”
“Because,” Lucy said, “I was carrying his child.”
All at once, I understood. It was a revelation so sudden and so forceful that, had I been standing, it would have knocked me to the floor. Even seated, I needed to grab the table to steady myself.
“Thomas,” I said, gasping. “He’s not your brother.”
Lucy lunged toward me, hand outstretched. She pushed an open palm against my mouth and hissed into my ear. “Never say that again. Understand me? Never.”
Unable to speak, I attempted a nod. Although the gesture caused Lucy to pull her hand away, she remained on top of me, her breath hot against my face.
“Promise me,” she demanded.
I wiped my mouth, trying to erase the feeling of her hand crushing my lips. “I promise.”
“He doesn’t know. He will never know.”
“I won’t tell a soul,” I assured her. “Truly.”
Finally convinced of my sincerity, Lucy slowly backed away and collapsed into her chair. Slumped and askew, her arms dangling from the chair’s sides, she looked utterly exhausted.
“Now do you see why I stayed?” she said. “I couldn’t run off while I was with child. I would have been disgraced, scandalized, most likely punished. My parents made it clear I was dead to them, so I couldn’t return home. My only choice was to stay with Declan.”
“Did he know about the baby?”
“He knew,” Lucy said. “And, oh, was he furious about it. He said I had tricked him. Said I must have been carrying on with another man and was just using him as cover. But when he knocked me down and started kicking me in the stomach, well, that was the last straw. I could take the beatings. I was used to them. But an unborn child? He had no way to defend himself. I was his only protection.”
Lucy looked past me, as if just behind my head she could see her past being acted out like a shadow play on the wall. Her features were devoid of emotion—a mask of calm. But I could tell she was recalling everything, experiencing that part of her life all over again.
“I knew that once the baby was born, Declan would treat him the same way he treated me,” she said. “And I couldn’t have that happen. So I started taking in extra wash, hoping he wouldn’t notice. I hid the money in a tin behind the stove, working and saving for months.”
“By the time the baby was born, did you have enough money for the two of you to get away?” I asked.
Lucy broke her reverie, the corners of her mouth lifting into a half smile. “Yes. With enough left over to buy some rat poison.”
As she told me the rest of her story, Declan O’Malley’s death seemed inevitable—a series of preor
dained events clicking into place. When the baby was a month old, Lucy fled, taking shelter in the next town over. Declan found her within a day, dragging her and the screaming infant back to their rented room before beating her senseless. That’s when Lucy knew that no matter how far she ran, no matter where she hid, Declan would surely find her. There was only one way she could ever truly escape.
She waited another week—enough time to let her bruises heal—before cooking his favorite beef stew, adding the arsenic-laden rat poison for good measure. Declan gobbled it down, not noticing that Lucy hadn’t taken a single bite.
“He was dead within five minutes,” she told me. “I threw out the remainder of the stew and summoned the police.”
When a policeman arrived, she told them Declan had brought the stew home with him, from where she didn’t know. She said the baby was her newborn brother, placed into her care after her mother died in childbirth and her father killed himself in a fit of grief. The lie, she figured, would make the police more sympathetic to her plight.
They believed her, at first. But when the storekeeper downstairs told the police he had overheard fighting, doubts crept in. They examined Declan’s body, finding traces of arsenic. Once that happened, they began to question Lucy mercilessly. As the weeks passed, it was clear the police knew what she had done. So she did the only thing she could do—she fled, taking infant Thomas with her to Baltimore.
There, she changed her name to Lucy Smith. It wasn’t very creative, but no one seemed to care. She kept up the ruse about being Thomas’s older sister. That way no one judged her unfairly. In fact, people admired her for taking on such a burden.
Within a month, she met Mr. Collins, a man thirty years her senior. They wed a month after that and moved to Philadelphia.
“Mr. Collins was also a wretched man,” Lucy said. “But at least he never hit me. And he tolerated Thomas. When he died—quite naturally, I might add—I became the person I am now.”
And I understood why she had been so eager to clear her name after Lenora Grimes Pastor died. The longer the investigation went on, the more time someone like Barclay would have to look into her past.
“Thank you for being honest with me,” I told her. “My mind has changed. I don’t think you killed Mrs. Pastor and Sophie Kruger.”
“I didn’t, Edward,” Lucy said. “I swear to you.”
“But Inspector Barclay thinks otherwise.”
Lucy brought a hand to her mouth again, this time in shock. “My God. That means he knows about Declan.”
“He does,” I said. “But his concern is those murdered here in Philadelphia. We must prove you innocent of those as soon as we can. After that, you must tell Barclay the truth about Declan. Tell him everything you just told me. He’s a good man, Lucy. He’ll understand. But you’ll need to show that you regret your actions.”
“But I don’t have any regrets,” Lucy admitted. “I could say I regret taking up with Declan in the first place, but that would mean I’d never have had Thomas. I know he’s rough around the edges, but deep down, he’s a good boy.”
“So you’re glad you killed Declan?”
“I’m happy to have gotten away from him, yes,” she said. “If I had stayed, I’m certain he would have killed me. Thomas as well, most likely. I wish it could have been different. I wish he would have let me go.”
“And from what we heard during the séance, he still holds a grudge.”
Lucy shuddered. “Hearing him was awful. I didn’t think such a thing was truly possible. And now . . . now I fear that someday I’ll hear him again.”
“I highly doubt that,” I said.
“But how can we know for certain?” Lucy asked, green eyes wide and plaintive. “What if his spirit seeks me out again?”
“Then you won’t be as shocked by it. You’ve already heard his spirit once.”
“You can’t imagine the terror I felt when I heard that voice,” Lucy said. “It was as if no time had passed. Like he was right there beside me, that iron poker raised. I was so shaken that I was prepared to confess everything, just to get that damned voice to stop.”
Her words took a moment to sink in. They trickled into my brain like ice water, slowly filling it, freezing into something solid, something tangible.
An idea.
I thought about our situation and how things had gone terribly wrong for both of us. I was a murder suspect, a fact that had caused the loss of my job. The effort to clear my name resulted in the end of my engagement. Lucy’s situation was more dire. Because of her past deeds—and despite our best efforts—she had emerged as the prime suspect.
Yes, it was easy to see why Barclay would think Lucy was guilty. She had a true motive for wanting Mrs. Pastor and Sophie Kruger dead. There was also the fact that she had killed before, although under extremely different circumstances. But Barclay didn’t know about Corinthian Black and the Praediti.
My theory was that Mr. Black had had a hand in both deaths. There was a strong possibility he had killed Sophie Kruger himself. As for Mrs. Pastor, he wasn’t in the room with us when she died and therefore couldn’t be the guilty party. But someone present was, perhaps working on orders from Mr. Black himself.
Eldridge Dutton, having been the only one to admit meeting him, was the most obvious culprit. But I doubted his guilt, for he knew that killing Mrs. Pastor would sever the final link to his late wife, Laura.
That left only four other people who could have done it. Lucy and I had spoken to all of them. We had learned their secrets. Yet we still weren’t any closer to identifying which one of them was the culprit.
Time, unfortunately, was running out. My lie to Barclay had only bought us a day or so. But soon he was going to realize the ruse and arrest Lucy for two murders. Because of our investigation, I would be forever associated with her. My job at the Evening Bulletin would still be lost. Violet would continue to want nothing to do with me. Even Barclay, my old friend, would rightfully put distance between us.
It was a desperate time indeed. We needed to take desperate measures.
“Do you really mean that?” I asked Lucy. “Being so tormented that you almost confessed to what you had done?”
“Of course,” she said. “Why?”
“Because it wouldn’t surprise me if others were to have the same reaction.”
I looked around the dim room, my attention settling on the nearby table. There were still instruments scattered on top of it, lying dormant. My gaze shifted to the so-called spirit cabinet against the wall and I thought about the sham of a séance I had witnessed in that room. What Lucy and Thomas had devised weren’t bad illusions. While they had failed to trick me, the bells on the table and the “ghost” in the cabinet had managed to fool others. Perhaps they could again.
“You need to hold a séance,” I told Lucy. “You need to contact Lenora Grimes Pastor.”
She responded with a confused laugh. “You, of all people, should know I’m not capable of that.”
“I know,” I replied. “But I don’t mean for real. We gather everyone who was in the room with us when Mrs. Pastor died. We bring them here and hold a séance. If the mood is right and the illusions convincing, the person who killed her—”
Lucy, suddenly catching on, gasped and said, “—might confess to her murder.”
BOOK SEVEN
Things Half in Shadow
I
We worked nonstop through the night, preparing the room for what we hoped would be a convincing séance. It wasn’t easy. There were plenty of small problems to solve and, I hate to admit, much arguing involved. But by the time dawn spread its misty wings across the sky, we were finished.
“Do you really think this will work?” Lucy asked.
She was slumped in a chair, seemingly on the cusp of sleep. I lay on the floor, trying to stave off exhaustion. Until she spoke, I had been taking a series of seconds-long naps, my eyes flying open and my body shuddering each time I woke.
“It needs to wo
rk. We have no other option.”
Lucy looked around the room through heavily lidded eyes. “I have to admit, it’s impressive. Your father taught you well.”
“I’d rather not speak of him,” I said.
I hadn’t told Lucy about my prison visit, nor did I intend to. Despite toiling all night, I knew a large part of my exhaustion stemmed from my earlier encounter with Magellan Holmes. Memories of seeing him were still too raw to be able to hear his name. It was like a hangover in that regard.
“I’m sorry,” Lucy said. “So now that the room is ready, what next?”
Forcing myself to sit up, I outlined the rest of our day. In order for our plan to work, we needed every member of Mrs. Pastor’s final séance present. That meant rounding them all up and inviting them to Lucy’s house. If they resisted, then we needed to coerce them into coming. I wasn’t above using blackmail, if necessary, vowing to expose all of their secrets. And if that failed to work, then I was prepared to get Barclay involved. They would have no choice but to come if the police ordered them to.
With the understanding that the task was too great to complete together, Lucy and I divided the list of suspects. She agreed to reach out to P. T. Barnum and Elizabeth Mueller. I assigned myself Mr. and Mrs. Dutton and Robert Pastor. With our tasks set, we parted ways until later that evening.
Once home, weary and unkempt, I got as much sleep as time would allow. It wasn’t much, a few hours at most, but it left me far more alert than if I hadn’t slept at all. Still, the unkempt part needed to be taken care of. Without Lionel around, that proved to be more difficult than I expected. Carting buckets of water upstairs for my bath wasn’t easy work, and by the time I had bathed and shaved, I was again exhausted. Once the whole business of Mrs. Pastor’s murder was over—if it would ever be over—my next order of business had to be finding a new butler.
I then ate a quick lunch under the watchful eye of Mrs. Patterson, told her I wouldn’t be needing her for the rest of the day, and set off for the home of Eldridge and Leslie Dutton.
