Valise in hand, Pitezel strolled along the Philadelphia streets, looking for someplace to eat. He had built up a powerful hunger, not having consumed a bite since his arrival in the city that morning, Monday, July 30. Reaching the corner of Ninth and Cherry, he found a small neighborhood restaurant with the proprietor’s name—Josiah Richman—painted in gold letters on the front window.
After treating himself to a substantial meal—broiled spring chicken, hashed browns, and asparagus, followed by apple pie and coffee—Pitezel leaned back contentedly and reached into his shirt pocket for a cigar. Then, catching the owner’s attention, he beckoned him over.
Josiah Richman might have been forgiven for forming an unfavorable snap judgment of the stranger, based solely on appearance. Over the past dozen years, Pitezel had acquired an increasingly roughneck look—complete with broken nose and several missing front teeth—and his expression seemed fixed in a permanent scowl. His general air of disreputability, moreover, was intensified by his travel-rumpled clothing and by the scraggly goatee he had cultivated in recent months.
Still, when Pitezel began to address the proprietor, he spoke politely enough.
He was a stranger to the city, he explained, and was looking for a place to board temporarily until he found a house to rent for his wife and children, who would be joining him in several weeks. As it happened, Richman’s sister ran a lodging house. Having decided that the well-spoken stranger was a perfectly respectable fellow after all, Richman provided him with the address.
Pitezel proceeded directly to Susan Harley’s boardinghouse at 1002 Race Street and rented a room for himself. Then he settled in to wait for Holmes.
The precise date of Holmes’s appearance in Philadelphia remains uncertain, though by Sunday, August 5—the day Georgiana was scheduled to arrive from Illinois—he was already settled in a rooming house run by a widow named Adella Alcorn, who was a licensed physician, though she had long ago given up her practice.
When Georgiana’s train pulled into the station, Holmes was waiting on the platform, a small bouquet in hand. He greeted her warmly. Then—exchanging the posy for her suitcase—he escorted her outside to a waiting coupé. Shortly after six P.M. the carriage drew up to the rooming house at 1905 North Eleventh Street.
Though Georgiana’s visit with her friend had done wonders for her spirit, she was clearly in need of refreshment after her tiring, overnight trip. Mrs. Dr. Alcorn suggested to Holmes (whom she knew as Mr. H. M. Howard, the name he had inscribed in the register) that he and his wife join her for a cup of tea.
Seated in the parlor across from the couple, Adella Alcorn nibbled at a tea cake and questioned Mr. Howard about his business. He explained that he represented a firm marketing an ingenious device for copying business documents and had come to Philadelphia to see about leasing several of the machines to the Pennsylvania Railroad Company.
As he spoke, he reached out occasionally to squeeze the hand of his young wife, who had changed from her traveling suit into a blue skirt and matching shirtwaist. Sipping from her cup, the landlady smiled at the couple—the debonair businessman and his demure, soft-spoken wife. She herself had enjoyed thirty happy years of marriage, and it did her heart good to see these handsome young people, so obviously in love.
Over the next few days, Holmes left Georgiana at the rooming house while he went about his business, presumably the demonstration of his ABC Copier to officers of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. In reality, he and Pitezel were meeting to work out the final details of their scheme.
They had already decided that Pitezel, under the name of B. F. Perry, would rent a house somewhere in the city and pose as a dealer in patents. This guise made sense since Pitezel did, in fact, possess some knowledge of the business. Several years earlier, he had tinkered together a cleverly constructed coal bin, designed to keep the lumps from being stolen and the dust from polluting the air. With Holmes’s assistance, he had taken out a patent on his invention in 1891 and attempted to market it in Chicago. Nothing had come of the venture, but Pitezel had acquired enough firsthand experience to pass himself off convincingly as a patent broker.
Several important matters remained to be settled before they could execute their scheme: they had to locate a suitable place for Pitezel to set up shop, and Holmes had to come up with a substitute corpse to pass off as Pitezel’s remains.
Still, things seemed to be going along nicely. But on Thursday, August 9, as they took their lunch at a small downtown eatery, they were shocked to discover that the entire plan—nurtured so lovingly for the better part of a year—had been jeopardized by the most outrageous of oversights.
For whatever reason—the number of details he was obliged to keep in mind, the brain-muddling effects of his boozing, or perhaps simple carelessness—Pitezel had neglected to send in the most recent premium on his life insurance.
For a moment, Holmes simply sat gaping at Pitezel, who stammered an apology and did his best to avoid his partner’s eyes. Then, pounding the table so hard that the silverware flew, Holmes leapt from his chair and hurried from the restaurant, Pitezel following a few paces behind.
A short time later, a clerk at Fidelity’s branch office in Chicago received a telegraphic money order for $157.50 as the semiannual payment on life insurance policy number 044145, registered under the name of B.F. Pitezel. As he recorded the transaction, the clerk noted that the money had arrived just in time. The payment was way overdue—indeed, August 9 was the last day of the grace period. A few hours later and the policy would have lapsed.
Mr. B. F. Pitezel, the clerk reflected, was a lucky man.
As soon as he and Pitezel laid eyes on the house, Holmes saw that it was just what he’d been looking for.
Even in the glare of that August afternoon, when the heat made the cobblestones shimmer, Callowhill Street had a dingy feel. A row of run-down, attached houses—two-and-a-half stories high with façades of faded brick—occupied one side of the block. Directly opposite stood the abandoned station of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, crumbling and desolate. It was important that Pitezel draw as little attention to himself as possible—and this was clearly a neighborhood where he could open up shop without worrying about attracting too much business.
The building at number 1316 had been vacant for some time—a testimony to its unfavorable location. The bottom floor had been converted into a little store, with a display window facing the street and a bare metal awning frame that stretched over the sidewalk, supported by a pair of iron stanchions planted close to the curb. The second floor of the building consisted of two small bedrooms—more than enough for Pitezel’s needs.
Because the house had stood empty for so long, the rent had been reduced to $10 a week. And there was still another feature of the place that made it especially appealing to Holmes, a feature that had actively discouraged other potential tenants. But it suited Holmes’s purpose to a tee.
Directly behind 1316 Callowhill Street—so close that only a narrow alleyway separated the two buildings—stood the city morgue.
17
From troublous sight and sounds set free;
In such a twilight hour of breath,
Shall one retrace his life, or see.
Through shadows, the true face of death?
—Ernest Dowson, “Extreme Unction” (1896)
It was one of Eugene Smith’s neighbors who first spotted the sign—a plain muslin sheet painted with crude block letters of red and black—displayed in the ground-floor window of 1316 Callowhill Street: B. F. PERRY, PATENTS BOUGHT AND SOLD. The very next morning—Wednesday, August 22—Smith left his house on Rhodes Street and headed over to Callowhill to check out Mr. Perry’s office for himself.
An unemployed carpenter and habitual tinkerer, Smith had recently devised an ingenious tool-sharpener that could put the edge back on a dull handsaw with a few strokes of the blade. Smith had assembled a model but had no idea how to go about peddling his invention. Mr. Perry might be just t
he man to help.
The bell above the doorway jangled as Smith stepped inside the office and glanced around. A more sophisticated man might have wondered at the shabbiness of the place, which had been fitted out with some cheap, secondhand furnishings: a couple of rickety chairs, a battered desk, an old wooden filing cabinet. The walls were barren except for a crude wooden shelf holding an assortment of chemicals—benzine, chloroform, ammonia—in brown, stoppered bottles.
The proprietor, who emerged a moment later from the gloom of the rear storeroom, looked more like a roustabout than a businessman. But Smith—a simple, unlettered individual, not liable to suspicion—was either unbothered by or oblivious to these details.
Putting out his right hand, he introduced himself to Mr. Perry and explained why he was there. The patent dealer listened attentively, stroking his wispy goatee. “Sounds interesting,” he replied when Smith had finished talking. “Why don’t you bring the thing around later today and let me have a look?”
Pumping Perry’s hand again, Smith left the office and strode home excitedly, convinced that his hard luck had finally changed.
Shortly after lunch, he returned with his model. Mr. Perry carried it over to his desk and sat down to examine it. Hovering nearby, Smith—less out of curiosity than politeness—put a few friendly questions to Perry. How long he had been in the patent business? When had he opened up shop on Callowhill Street?
Perry, however, was disinclined to converse—indeed, his replies were so curt that Smith soon gave up the effort. He did, however, learn that Perry had recently moved to Philadelphia from St. Louis and had been operating in his present location for less than a week.
A few minutes later, Perry rose to his feet and—complimenting Smith on the cleverness of his device—said, yes, he believed he could do something with it. Smith was delighted. But when Perry explained that he would have to hold on to the model, Smith’s expression suddenly changed. He couldn’t see where Mr. Perry intended to keep his invention, he said. It certainly wouldn’t fit inside the desk. And he was reluctant to leave it lying around in the open.
Nodding toward the rear of the office, Perry said that he would place it in the storeroom. It would be safe enough in there, though he would have to stow it on the floor. He intended to put up a counter any day now, but his tools were still in St. Louis and—
“I can build you a counter,” Mr. Smith volunteered.
Perry mulled that over for a moment, then nodded okay.
After agreeing on a day to do the job, Smith picked up his hat and made ready to leave.
Just then, the doorbell sounded, and as the two men glanced around, someone stepped inside the shop.
By the time Holmes realized that Pitezel had a visitor, it was too late. The man had already swiveled his head and seen him enter. Holmes was galled—he did not want any witnesses connecting him with Pitezel. For an instant, he considered turning on his heels and hurrying away, but decided against it.
Keeping his expression blank and his face slightly averted from the stranger, he strode directly to the rear staircase and nodded stiffly to Pitezel, who excused himself to the man, then followed Holmes upstairs.
On the dark second-story landing, Holmes grabbed Pitezel’s arm. “Who is he?” he demanded, his voice a harsh whisper.
Pitezel quickly explained.
“Get rid of him,” Holmes snapped.
Smith had reseated himself in one of the two straight-back chairs and was gazing idly around the office when the patent dealer reappeared, only moments after he had followed the nicely dressed gentleman up the stairs. “Well, I suppose my business is done with you,” Smith said, rising. “There’s no use in my detaining you any longer.”
“Let me give you a receipt,” replied Perry as he walked to his desk. Sliding open a drawer, he removed a little notebook, from which he tore a single sheet. He wrote out and signed the paper, then handed it to Smith, who glanced at it briefly and pocketed it. After shaking hands and promising to return in a few days to put up the counter, Smith departed.
As soon as he was gone, Pitezel hurried back up the narrow staircase.
He found Holmes waiting in the front bedroom, perched on the edge of the cot. Besides the office furnishings, Pitezel had purchased the cot and a cheap, three-drawer bureau from a dealer named Hughes, who operated out of a warehouse on Buttonwood Street. The bedroom window, which looked out over Callowhill Street, had been opened to its fullest extent, but even so, the little room was sweltering. Holmes, who had removed his derby and set it beside him on the mattress, was swabbing his brow with a big handkerchief.
Holmes had come with some important news. He had just received word from a certain physician he knew in New York City, a man he had done business with before, who was prepared to supply him with a male cadaver that sounded just right for their needs. Holmes would be travelnig to New York City soon to secure the corpse and transport in back to Philadelphia. If things went smoothly, they would have the insurance money in a matter of weeks.
The two men spent a few more minutes talking, then Holmes rose from the cot. As he made ready to leave, Pitezel asked for some money to see him through the next week. Holmes removed a few bills from his wallet and handed them over, advising his partner not to drink up every penny.
On the appointed date—Thursday, August 30—Smith returned to the patent office with his toolbox. Then he and the man he knew as Perry headed over to a nearby lumber-yard to pick up a board for the counter.
On the way back, Mr. Perry suggested that they stop for a drink at Fritz Richards’s saloon, located just a few doors down from 1316 Callowhill. Smith ordered a beer, while Perry drank whiskey. Once again Smith tried to strike up a conversation with the patent dealer but met with as little success as before.
Returning to the office, Smith proceeded to put up a rough counter in the rear storeroom. Afterward, Perry offered him fifty cents for the job, which the out-of-work carpenter gratefully accepted. Perry assured Smith that things were progressing nicely with the saw-sharpener—he had already contacted several potential investors.
“Why don’t you come round next week?” Perry suggested. “Maybe I’ll have some news for you then.”
Smith assured him he would, then gathered up his tools and left, pleased with his day’s work.
Several days later, on Saturday, September 1, Pitezel strolled over to Fritz Richards’s and stepped to the bar. Though he had been living in the neighborhood for only two weeks, he was already a regular customer. Indeed, this was his third visit to the saloon on that day alone, and it was not yet four o’clock.
After knocking back a few shots, he groped in his pocket for some cash and realized that he was down to his last few dollars. He was surprised at how fast his money was disappearing—virtually all of it down his throat.
Having been led to believe that Holmes would be departing for New York City the following morning, Pitezel decided to pay his partner a visit. He wasn’t sure how long Holmes would be gone, and he did not want to risk running out of cash.
Holmes was sitting in an easy chair, reading that day’s Inquirer, when someone knocked at his door, shortly after six P.M. It was the landlady, Mrs. Dr. Alcorn, who informed him that a gentleman was downstairs wishing to see him. Holmes thanked her and said that he would be down in a moment.
“And how is Mrs. Howard this evening?” the landlady inquired.
“Considerably improved,” Holmes replied.
Georgiana, who had been feeling indisposed for the past few days, was sitting up in bed, reading a novel by lamplight, when Holmes walked into the bedroom. Donning his suit jacket, he explained that he had a visitor and would be back presently.
He returned about ten minutes later, smiling broadly. The caller, he told Georgiana, was an agent of the Pennsylvania Railroad. The company had decided to lease a dozen of his ABC copying machines. The deal had to be consummated immediately, however, since the official handling the matter was leaving on a business trip t
he following afternoon.
As a result, Holmes had arranged to travel to the official’s home first thing next morning to sign the contracts. With his business completed, he and Georgiana could leave Philadelphia just as soon as she felt up to traveling.
With his pocketbook replenished, Pitezel was in a chipper mood. Stopping off for a little refreshment at Fritz Richards’s, he struck up a conversation with the bartender, William Moebius. Pitezel explained that he was a newcomer to Philadelphia, where he hoped to establish himself in the patent business. As he polished off his fourth and final drink, he asked if the saloon would be open the following day.
Moebius shook his head. The city prohibited the sale of liquor on Sunday. If Pitezel wanted something to tide him over, he had better stock up now.
Pitezel placed four bits on the bar asked for a pint. Moebius handed him two half-pint flasks and Pitezel headed home.
A little while later, as he reclined on his cot in the second-floor bedroom, his lips pressed to the mouth of one of the flasks, he realized that he was low on another staple. Slipping his jacket back on, he walked to a nearby tobacco shop run by a woman named Pierce and purchased a handful of cigars.
Then, making his way back to Callowhill Street, he returned to his bedroom and his bottles and settled in for the night.
Early the next morning—Sunday, September 2—Holmes bid Georgiana good-bye, walked into the sunshine of that blazing Sabbath morn, and proceeded directly to 1316 Callowhill. The street was completely deserted as he strode briskly to the front door, unlocked it with his duplicate key, and slipped inside.
Moving stealthily across the floor, he paused at the foot of the rear staircase and listened intently. The liquid snore he could hear from above was precisely the sound he expected. Holmes was thoroughly familiar with Pitezel’s habits and had been counting on his partner to drink himself into a stupor.
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