Then, promising her that she would be reunited with Benny and the children soon, he headed for the train station, his pocket bulging with cash.
As Holmes traveled back to Indianapolis, he must have felt suffused with satisfaction. The venture had worked out well for everyone. His cut had been the healthiest of all—over $6,500 all told. That was only fair, of course. After all, he had devoted nearly a year of his life to the project. Howe had come away with $2,500 for what amounted to only a few days’ of work. Even Carrie had ended up with a few hundred bucks.
Given Holmes’s plans for her and her family, that was certainly an adequate amount. He doubted that she would be able to spend it in the time she had remaining to her.
But another party was also expecting to share in the profits—to the tune of $500. And Holmes had failed to take this individual into account. Whether this failure was accidental or deliberate, Holmes would live to regret it—like every other man who had made the mistake of crossing Marion Hedgepeth.
27
The nerve, the calculation and the audacity of the man were unparalleled. Murder was his natural bent. Sometimes, he killed from sheer greed of gain; oftener, as he himself confessed, to gratify an inhuman thirst for blood. Not one of his crimes was the outcome of a sudden burst of fury—“hot blood,” as the codes say. All were deliberate; planned and concluded with consummate skill.
—Chicago Journal, May 9, 1896
Holmes returned to Georgiana in a jubilant mood, sweeping her up in his arms and spinning her around the hotel room. Everything had gone smoothly in St. Louis, he said happily—“slick as a whistle.” Reaching into his jacket, he extracted a fat pack of $100 bills, held it up, and gave it a smug little shake.
Georgiana’s saucer eyes grew even bigger. “Is that ten thousand dollars, Harry?” She had never seen so much money before.
“Five thousand, my dear. I forwarded the other five to my broker, Mr. Blackman, in Chicago.”
He tossed the money onto a side table, then knelt by his valise. “I have some gifts for you,” he said. “For being so patient with me.” Undoing the clasp, he reached inside the bag and brought out a leather-bound Bible, plus two velvet jewelry boxes, one containing a locket set with pearls, the other a pair of diamond earrings.
Georgiana threw her arms around Holmes and declared herself the luckiest woman in the world.
They lingered in bed until late the following morning, then spent the afternoon out on the town, shopping, dining, strolling in the park. The fall was at its peak and the trees flamed with color.
It was early evening by the time they returned to their hotel room. Georgiana had just untied her bonnet when Holmes suddenly remarked that he had forgotten to check at the front desk for messages. He would run downstairs and be back in a moment.
When he entered the room again a few minutes later, Georgiana could see at once that he bore disappointing news. She struggled, with only partial success, to keep reproach from her voice. “Don’t say that you must leave again, Harry,” she protested. “Not so soon.”
“It is a most urgent matter. It cannot be postponed.”
She expelled a sigh. “Where must you travel to this time?”
“Cincinnati.”
Georgiana dropped onto the edge of the mattress and sat silently for a moment before announcing that she would not remain another day in the Circle Park Hotel. She was beginning to feel like a prisoner. Even the company of her new friend, Mrs. Rodius, had begun to feel oppressive.
Seating himself at her side, Holmes placed an arm about her. He was all sympathy. Perhaps she should go back to Franklin again for a few days, he suggested. He would wire her there as soon as he had a better idea of his situation. Georgiana, her shoulders slumped, blew out another sigh and nodded.
The next day—Thursday, October 4—Holmes accompanied her to the station, waiting on the platform until her train disappeared from sight.
Then, with his wife out of the way, he turned his steps toward the Circle House, where the Pitezel children waited, alone and unsuspecting.
They were crestfallen when he broke the news to them: he had not brought their mother back with him after all. She had decided to pay one last visit to her folks in Galva before journeying east. The children would have to wait a little while longer to see her—maybe a week at the most.
Alice and Nellie tried not to let their disappointment get the best of them. But Howard was inconsolable. Being stuck in a hotel room with nothing to do but draw pictures and read about the life of General Sheridan was hard on the high-spirited ten-year-old. His sisters, too, were growing unhappier by the day.
Telling them to throw on their jackets, Holmes took them on a shopping spree, buying dresses and hair ribbons for the girls, wooden toys and a box of crayons for Howard, and new “crystal” pens for all three, so that they could write to their mama and report how much fun they were having with “Uncle Howard” (as Holmes insisted they call him). He bought them a fine meal at a restaurant—chicken, mashed potatoes, milk, and lemon pie.
Afterward, they strolled along Washington Street, pausing before a shoe store to watch an oil painter turn out landscapes at the rate of one every minute and a half. Each customer who purchased a pair of shoes for a dollar received a painting for free (plus a small charge for the picture frame). Alice wished she could afford one of the paintings, they were all so pretty and colorful.
Holmes had assumed that the little expedition would keep the children satisfied for a while. But no sooner had they entered the Circle House front doors than Howard began throwing a fit—kicking, screaming, shouting that he did not want to be cooped up in the room again. Holmes had to drag the boy across the lobby by the hand.
The proprietor of the hotel, Herman Ackelow, looked on from behind the front desk, shaking his head. He felt sorry for the children. His eldest son, who sometimes brought them their meals, had returned from their room on several occasions and reported that he had found all three of them in tears. They missed their mama terribly and couldn’t imagine why she had not written to them.
Back in the room, Alice and Nellie did their best to comfort their brother. It wasn’t until Holmes threatened to give him a hiding, however, that the boy finally calmed down. Ordering them all to stay put, Holmes promised to return the following day.
On his way out of the hotel, he stopped to talk to Mr. Ackelow, who had been led to believe Holmes was the children’s uncle.
What was the trouble with the little fellow? the hotelkeeper inquired.
Holmes’s expression turned somber. The boy was a bad one, he said sadly. Trouble from the day he was born.
“I do not know how my sister will be able to manage,” he continued, his voice heavy with concern. She was a sickly widow whose good-hearted but improvident husband had left her without a red cent.
Holmes was considering various alternatives on her behalf—maybe binding the boy out to a farmer or placing him in an institution. He hadn’t figured out the best course of action yet. But something was going to have to be done about the boy.
And soon.
It was almost five that same afternoon when the bell over the door of Schiffling’s Repair Shop jingled. The owner, Albert Schiffling, glanced up from his workbench as a well-dressed gentleman stepped into the shop, a pair of slender black cases cradled in his arms.
Introducing himself as a physician, the gentleman placed his cases on the counter, undid their latches, and swung open the lids.
“I would like to have these sharpened,” the gentleman said. “How long will you need?”
Schiffling looked down. The cases were full of gleaming surgical tools—scalpels, knives, saws.
Schiffling replied that he could have the job done by the following Monday.
The gentleman stroked his mustache thoughtfully for a moment, then said, “That will do.”
Schiffling wrote out a receipt and handed it to the doctor, who thanked him and left.
Outside, in the thin
ning daylight, Holmes consulted his pocket watch. It was too late to start looking for a suitable house now. He would commence his search tomorrow.
Samuel Brown—who operated a small real estate agency out of his house in Irvington, a picture-pretty village about six miles from downtown Indianapolis—was just settling back to read his daily newspaper on the afternoon of Friday, October 5, when the stranger entered. Brown, a genial-looking sixty-year-old with a personality that matched his appearance, removed his reading glasses and greeted the gentleman cheerfully.
The stranger, however, seemed in no mood for pleasantries. Without so much as a “good afternoon” he explained that he had just rented a house from Dr. Thompson and had been told that Mr. Brown was holding the key. He would like to have it. At once.
Though somewhat taken aback by the fellow’s brusqueness, the good-natured old man complied without delay. Sliding open the center drawer of his desk, he rummaged among its contents until he came up with the key. Without a word, the stranger plucked it from his hand, then swiveled and hurried from the office.
For a few moments, Brown simply sat there, clucking his tongue. He was unaccustomed to being treated so rudely. Finally, he replaced his glasses on his nose and returned to his paper, wondering what the world was coming to.
Several hours later, Holmes showed up at the children’s room in the Circle House and announced that he had decided to take Howard away. The boy was going to stay with Holmes’s cousin, Minnie Williams, a wealthy lady with no children of her own who would take wonderful care of him. Miss Williams owned a big house in Terre Haute, and Howard would get all the fresh air and exercise he wanted. The girls, meanwhile, would remain in Indianapolis until the rest of the family—Mama, Dessie, and baby Wharton—arrived.
Holmes instructed Alice to pack her brother’s belongings in his small wooden trunk. He would be back for the boy early the next day.
When Holmes arrived on Saturday morning, however, Howard was nowhere to be seen.
“Where is he?” Holmes demanded.
“He snuck out,” Alice said sheepishly. “Me and Nellie were busy packing his things, and when we turned back around, he was gone.” She made an exasperated sound. “He just won’t mind me at all no more.”
Holmes was furious, but he had pressing matters to attend to and no time to hunt for the boy. He told Alice that he would be back in a day or so. And this time, Howard had better be ready and waiting.
When Holmes returned to the Circle House on Monday, Howard was seated cross-legged on the floor, playing with a little wooden top. Ordering the boy into his coat, Holmes told Alice and Nellie to bid their brother good-bye. Both girls broke into tears as they covered Howard’s cheeks with kisses.
“Do not take on so,” Holmes admonished. “You will all be together again soon.”
Then, directing Howard to grab one end of the small wooden trunk, Holmes took hold of the other and led the boy from the room, leaving the heartsick girls to comfort each other as best they could.
The house Holmes had rented from Dr. Thompson was far more secluded than the one he had been forced to abandon in Cincinnati. A one-and-a-half-story cottage with an attached barn, it stood a short distance from Union Avenue on the outskirts of Irvington. No other houses were in the immediate neighborhood—only the Methodist church, located directly across the street. The west side of the cottage was sheltered by a grove of catalpa trees. To the east stretched a large, grassy common. The tracks of the Pennsylvania Railroad lay two hundred yards to the south. All in all, Holmes could not have asked for a more isolated site.
Even so, he had an unexpected visitor on Tuesday, October 9. Strolling past the property that morning, Elvet Moorman—a rawboned, flap-eared sixteen-year-old who did odd jobs for Dr. Thompson—paused to watch a pair of men unload some furniture from a horse-drawn wagon and carry it into the house. Assisting the movers were a gentleman in rolled-up shirtsleeves and a little boy in a gray coat, who helped with some of the lighter objects.
Later that afternoon, Dr. Thompson asked Moorman to return to the house to milk the cow that was kept in the attached barn. Moorman had just hunkered down on his stool when the gentleman he had seen earlier entered and asked if Moorman would lend a hand. The man, who did not introduce himself by name, needed help putting up a large coal stove that he had moved into the barn.
As they set to work, Moorman asked the man why he did not make a connection for natural gas and use a gas stove instead of a coal-burner.
“Because I do not think gas is healthy for children,” the man replied in an odd, almost smirking tone.
Moorman left as soon as the job was completed. As he lugged his milk can past the house, he called out a greeting to the little boy in the gray coat, who stood by himself on the front porch and gave Moorman a forlorn little wave in return.
The following morning—Wednesday, October 10—a well-dressed gentleman, carrying a child’s gray coat rolled up into a bundle, entered a little grocery store in Irvington. The gentleman explained that he had been called away on an urgent business matter and wanted to make sure that the owner of the coat, a ten-year-old boy who had accidentally left it at his house, got it back. Could he leave the coat with the grocer?
The grocer agreed. Taking the coat from the man, he tucked it away beneath his counter.
The boy would come by to pick up the coat very soon, the gentleman said as he headed for the doorway. Probably no later than Thursday morning.
But the little boy never appeared.
28
The case of Holmes illustrates the practical as well as the purely ethical value of “honor among thieves,” and shows how a comparatively insignificant misdeed may ruin a great and comprehensive plan of crime.
—H. B. Irving, A Book of Remarkable Criminals
As far as the officers of Fidelity Mutual were concerned, the Pitezel case was closed. But one person in the company remained suspicious. That was part of his job. His name was William Gary, and he was Fidelity’s chief investigator and adjuster.
From the start, Gary had questioned the theory that Pitezel had been killed in an accidental explosion. To his eyes, the physical evidence at the death scene—the burned match, broken bottle, and corncob pipe—had all the earmarks of a setup. Fouse and his fellow executives had settled the policy against Gary’s advice, then turned their attention elsewhere. But Gary—an experienced sleuth who had begun his career as a member of the Philadelphia police force—had continued to brood over the affair.
As a result, when a business matter entirely unrelated to the Pitezel case brought him to St. Louis in early October, Gary did a little poking around on his own. The day after his arrival, he paid a visit to Jeptha D. Howe.
Seated in the young attorney’s office, Gary chatted about the Pitezels for a while. Then, putting a match to a cigar and leaning back in his chair, he casually asked, “I suppose you received a good fee for your work?”
Howe hesitated a moment, then replied, “Twenty-five hundred.”
Gary whistled at the impressive sum.
“I earned every penny,” Howe grumbled. “It should have been a third.”
Gary left the lawyer’s office more certain than ever that his company’s assumptions were wrong, but he had no solid proof to back up his doubts.
And then on the morning of Tuesday, October 9, fate placed that proof quite literally into his hands.
Gary was seated in the office of branch manager George Stadden when a message arrived from St. Louis police chief Lawrence Harrigan, requesting that an agent of the company call on him at once. Harrigan had just received a communication that bore on a case involving Fidelity Mutual.
Gary proceeded immediately to police headquarters, where Major Harrigan handed him a letter that had arrived earlier that day. The letter, Gary learned, was from a prisoner in the city jail who had shared a cell some months earlier with an accused swindler named H. M. Howard.
The prisoner’s name was Marion Hedgepeth, and this i
s what his letter said:
DEAR SIR:—
When H. M. Howard was in here some two months ago, he came to me and told me he would like to talk to me, as he had read a great deal of me, etc.: also after we got well acquainted, he told me he had a scheme by which he could make $10,000, and he needed some lawyer who could be trusted, and said if I could, he would see I got $500 for it. I then told him that J. D. Howe could be trusted, and he then went on and told me that B. F. Pitezel’s life was insured for $10,000, and that Pitezel and him were going to work the insurance company for the $10,000, and just how they were going to do it; even going into minute details; that he was an expert at it, as he had worked it before, and that being a druggist, he could easily deceive the insurance company by having Pitezel fix himself up according to his directions and appear that he was mortally wounded by an explosion, and then put a corpse in place of Pitezel’s body, etc., and then have it identified as that of Pitezel. I did not take much stock in what he told me, until after he went out on bond, which was in a few days, when J. D. Howe came to me and told me that that man Howard, that I had recommended him to, had come and told him that I had recommended Howe to him and had laid the whole plot open to him, and Howe told me that he never heard of a finer or smoother piece of work, and that it was sure to work, and that Howard was one of the smoothest and slickest men that he ever heard tell of, etc., and Howe told me that he would see that I got $500 if it worked, and that Howard was going East to attend to it at once. (At this time I did not know what insurance company was to be worked, and am not sure yet as to which one it is, but Howe told me that it was the Fidelity Mutual of Philadelphia, whose office is, according to the city directory, at No. 520 Oliver Street.) Howe came down and told me every two or three days that everything was working smoothly and when notice appeared in the Globe Democrat and Chronicle of the death of B. F. Pitezel, Howe came down at once and told me that it was a matter of a few days until we would have the money, and that the only thing that might keep the company from paying it at once, was the fact that Howard and Pitezel were so hard up for money that they could not pay the dues on the policy until a day or two before it was due, and then had to send it by telegram, and that the company might claim that they did not get the money until after the lapse of the policy; but they did not, and so Howe and a little girl (I think Pitezel’s daughter) went back to Philadelphia and succeeded in identifying and having the body recognized as that of B. F. Pitezel. Howard told me that Pitezel’s wife was privy to the whole thing. Howe tells me now that Howard would not let Mrs. Pitezel go back to identify the supposed body of her husband, and that he feels almost positive and certain that Howard deceived Pitezel and that Pitezel in following out Howard’s instructions, was killed and that it was really the body of Pitezel.
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