The Hanging Women

by John Mead

  The

  Hanging

  Women

  John Mead

  First published in Great Britain in 2018 by

  The Book Guild Ltd

  9 Priory Business Park

  Wistow Road, Kibworth

  First published in Great Britain in 2018 by

  The Book Guild Ltd

  9 Priory Business Park

  Wistow Road, Kibworth

  Leicestershire, LE8 0RX

  Freephone: 0800 999 2982

  www.bookguild.co.uk

  Email: info@bookguild.co.uk

  Twitter: @bookguild

  Copyright © 2018 John Mead

  The right of John Mead to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This work is entirely fictitious and bears no resemblance to any persons living or dead.

  ISBN 9781912575107

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Dedicated to my family, for ensuring

  I know what to value in this life.

  Contents

  1 Derelict

  2 The Reverend

  3 Dinner Party

  4 Ruby’s

  5 Diamonds And Death

  6 Missing

  7 Searching

  8 Confidences

  9 More Sorrow

  10 Bamboozled

  11 An Unravelling

  12 Reportage

  Acknowledgments

  1

  Derelict

  Day One – Tuesday April 15th 1886

  He was finding the twisting of the two bodies, in the cold April wind coming off the river and flowing through the broken walls and empty windows, mesmerising. The pair, a black woman and a white woman both in their twenties, were tied together facing each other and were suspended by their right and left leg respectively. The wind seemed to catch them, like a sail, twisting them gently until the rope from which they were suspended was tightened to the point where it twirled them back to their starting point, the breeze then once again prevailing; the motion repeating over and over. It wasn’t so much the movement that held his attention, it was waiting for the turning pair to reach the zenith of their journey, just at the point where the rope tightened enough to twist them back. At this point the black woman’s thigh, buttocks and small of her back was silhouetted against the weak midday light of an overcast day, the flowing curve of the woman’s outline reminding him of Kitty as she had stretched naked, front down on the bed but half-turned, her smiling face towards him.

  What troubled him, as he sat on the pile of debris in the derelict warehouse on the north side of the Chicago River, was where he had been for the past day and two nights. He had been crawling across a meadow, looking for his rifle, and he was aware of the men and women, in formal wear, dancing just at the edge of his vision as he searched the ground. He was in formal dress himself and, though he always felt slightly ridiculous when putting it on, he knew it suited him so it wasn’t this that concerned him; it was what tugged at his right leg. Something black and shapeless clutched at his right foot and ankle, he dared not look back and went on with his search knowing if he could find his rifle the thing behind him would evaporate. Just as he put his hand on his rifle icy fingers distinctly gripped his foot and he involuntarily kicked out, fear gripping his chest. As he awoke the hand still held his foot in its death-like clasp and he continued to kick, tipping himself off the couch with a startled shout and onto his parlour floor.

  Martha, his wife, sat impassive and barely startled watching him; her knitting, her constant hobby now she had grandchildren, not that the pair required any supplementary knitwear as all their needs were provided by their wealthy parents, lay unheeded in her lap. “Are you alright?” she asked with genuine concern, “I was beginning to think you would sleep the morning away.”

  “What?” Jack asked testily, still disorientated and uncertain how he had ended up sprawled on the parlour floor, his voice horse and his mouth and tongue dry as dust.

  “You returned in the early hours, your attempts to enter the house woke Hettie and myself,” she placidly informed him, knowing it best to leave him to find his own way off the floor, his erratic ill-temper having grown worse over recent years as he drank more, “but we could not manage to help you up the stairs so thought you would fare better on the couch in here. We had been quite worried about you, Jack.”

  “Why’s that?” he asked, having managed to leaver himself back onto the couch, it was a three-seater but even so his long frame made it uncomfortable to sleep on and he ached in every muscle and joint. His vision, however, had stopped dancing and he was able to focus on the room and his wife; for a woman in her late forties she was still handsome, her auburn hair framed her strong face, whilst her brown eyes were warm and passionate. She was tall and curvaceous, her dress and jewellery were modest but clearly showed her to be of a class whose wealth gives them a comfortable if not an extravagant lifestyle. Had Jack felt in better humour he would have smiled at her sitting there concerned over his well-being.

  “You have been gone all of yesterday, the night and much of the afternoon before, it is unlike you not to send word,” Martha’s tone was neutral, she did not rebuke her husband as many wives would have, “I understand the work you do keeps you out but you have never been away so long.” It was the slightest emphasis on the word ‘work’ that grated with Jack as he knew that in practice she considered his work a euphemism for drinking, that plus the fact he could not find his hip-flask. His colt was still in his shoulder holster and his five-shot revolver was in the right pocket of his jacket but his flask was missing and, more than anything, he wanted a mouthful of whiskey to clear his head.

  “Do you want something to eat?’ Martha continued not getting any response from her husband who seemed preoccupied looking for something. “If it is your wallet you look for it is on the table in front of you, it fell out as we got you on the couch.” If it had been Lillian there to cook for him he might have given in to his hunger but Martha’s elderly maid and cook had died in January, a simple cold she had refused to give in to had laid her low, then put her in the ground. She had recently been replaced by Hettie, who had a Boston accent and cooked in the ‘french style’ that she inherited from her mother which Jack found not to his taste. Whilst Hortense and Gideon, a colored couple who between them looked after the house and garden, had been hired by Martha five years ago and were more used to Jack’s ways and tastes. As all three servants lived-in and, as Martha was often out visiting family and friends, it made Jack feel as if he stayed in a hotel with so many at hand to wait on him, yet never giving him the privacy or peace he wanted in his own home.

  “Do you not feel well, Jack?” the the merest hint of annoyance crept into Maratha’s voice at her husband’s silence.

  “Damn your eyes!” Jack’s temper erupted, he’d been only too aware of Martha’s searching gaze during her ‘interrogation’ of him. He lurched forward as he stood up, half-kicking, half-knocking over the small table and vase in front of him, spilling water and flowers across the carpet. “What business is it of yours where I’ve been, you may think little of
the work I do but some consider it of value.” He made certain to kick the overturned table across the room as he stormed out, leaving his stunned and confused spouse in his wake.

  He didn’t get far down Rush Street before his temper cooled and he realised he was hungry, thirsty and disheveled but he had no intention of going back. He caught a cab and had it wait whilst he went to his customary barber. He had the shop boy fetch him a clean suit and shirt from his home, whilst the barber trimmed his sparse, greying hair and thick, downturned pepper and salt moustache and side-whiskers. The barber knew his customer’s moods well enough to know when to talk and when to be silent, and also when to provide him with plentiful cups of hot, black Arbuckle; Jack’s favourite brand of coffee. Jack might have fallen asleep, with the hot towels around his face, had not the boy returned with his clothes and set the shop bell tinkling. Even so, changed and shaved he felt a new man and, having dispensed large tips, left the barber shop smiling; at least, what he thought of as a smile though others considered it something closer to a scowl.

  His dirty suit, returned home for cleaning, had given him little information about what he had done the previous day. It was grimy and looked as if he had, at least once, rolled about the street in it and it smelt of beer, smoke and cheap scent, which was hardly surprising given his tendency to frequent bars, though Kitty’s distinctive perfume was not evident. He remembered leaving home in the mid-afternoon and going to the River Bar, which was in an alley north of the river. It was here he had his usual fortnightly meeting with Hank Tipwell, to swap gossip and information about Chicago’s more criminally inclined and less salubrious citizens and events. However, after Hank left things started to get hazy, he was certain at one point he had been walking the streets and thought he remembered an argument and tussle with a youngish man but beyond that nothing; the previous day held no memories for him.

  As he crossed Rush Bridge in the cab he caught a glimpse of the Home Insurance building, on Adams and LaSalle, towering over all its neighbours. It had been on that corner he had first met Kitty. The ten storey building was newly finished but yet to open. Its height remained a novelty, even to the locals, and pedestrians tended to walk the crowded crossroads constantly looking up, so Jack and Kitty walking into each other was not without precedent. After the usual embarrassed apologises she had continued to engage him about the wondrous height of the building and Jack was happy to participate, supplying what little knowledge he had of the steel construction, not being adverse to conversing with a pretty woman.

  It was only later, as they ate an early dinner at Jack’s invitation, did she reveal they had already met and she had been waiting for him to recall her: Kathleen, Kitty to her family and friends, McGuire, née Tipwell, Hank’s elder sister. Jack could not recall her at Hank’s wedding, which he had attended with his wife, where Kitty had first seen him. Her younger brother, Hank, was Brandon Edward O’Shea’s godson and right hand man. The Tipwells, along with the McGuire’s and Murphy’s, were all cousins, aunts and uncles to the O’Shea’s and, as such, formed one large clan that were involved in all the political, financial and criminal deals across Chicago. Hank was, therefore, ‘a man to be reckoned with’ and as Kitty was a widow he took his guardianship of his sister seriously, which though she appreciated, she found irksome, restrictive and put off potential suitors. She had been rather taken by Jack, one of the few men Hank seemingly respected, and had deliberately walked into him at the crossroads.

  Kitty, a widow with a grown son of twenty, looked younger than her years and, despite the loss of a husband and daughter some ten years previously, went through life with a smile and lightness of heart. It was a surprise to her that she should find anything attractive in a morse, married man, fifteen years her senior but she quickly decided he would take her to bed. So, on their second meeting and against all properties and his own expectations, Jack found himself steering them both to a small, discreet hotel in order to spend the afternoon in love making. Jack, not being a passionate man, except about imbibing whiskey, was not the best of lovers but she seemed content and, at the end of the afternoon, she had stretched herself, half-turned towards him with her lower-back, buttocks and thigh making the same flowing, bow-like, line that he was to see reproduced a year later in the the silhouette of a naked, dead, black woman.

  Jack was disturbed from his reverie, still none the wiser as to how he had spent the previous day, by the sound of a heavy step on the warehouse’s rotten stairs.

  “Stevens, I got your message that you have found a body,” Inspector Uriah Micajah O’Leary, ‘Cage’ when off-duty, was a small, dark, muscular man, with sideburns and a moustache, of Irish and polish descent; he’d been in the force for sixteen years and a detective for ten. Although his sack suit and derby might not have marked him out as anything different from a prosperous business man, his voice or stare was enough to send a shiver down any wrong-doer’s spine.

  “As you see, Inspector, I did not play you false for I have two,” Jack informed him, his tone solemn despite the light hearted nature of his response.

  The inspector took in the scene before saying anything else. In the dusty grime of the floor he saw two sets of boot prints mingling with each other around where the bodies hung, though the larger sized prints were less frequent and had not approached so close. The larger set he traced back to Jack, sitting on a pile of debris off to the side where the smaller sized boots had not trod. The naked women, one black and the other white, had been hung upside down, using a double-block and tackle, suspended from a roof rafter. Their hands had been tied behind each others back as if embracing each other, the colored woman’s right ankle tied to the other woman’s left; their free legs had been bent and tied so as to cross behind their respective knee. Had the pair been the right way up it would look as if they were pirouetting on tip-toe, clasping each other in some macabre dance.

  The blood in both bodies had drained towards the head, discolouring and distending the skin and features, though as both had been garrotted their faces resembled no living person. The hair of the white female, who appeared the slightly elder of the two, had been loosened and hung down, in a golden stream, to brush the grime of the the floor; the black woman’s naturally curling hair still framed her face. In life the pair, both in their twenty’s, would have been considered attractive, both of medium height, the colored woman a hand’s breadth taller, both slim with figures that were likely to have attracted glances. In death, their contorted faces and starting eyes were far from appealing.

  “It was you that found them like this? You’ve touched nothing?” Inspector O’Leary asked, his tone professional, he’d know Jack Stevens for five years, having met him not too long after Stevens and his wife moved to Chicago and taken possession of their house near Oak and Rush. Despite everything he heard about Jack he rather liked the man and, along with the Pinkertons with whom he seemed to work, considered him a useful person to know; if for no other reason than he moved freely amongst both the highest and lowest of Chicago’s citizens yet was not aligned with nor gave favour to any fraction.

  “Yes,” Jack lied, “I happened to be strolling along the river, watching the boats and the like when I saw two boys of about eight or so run pell-mell from this building, therefore, I entered to take a look and found these dancing pair.” In actuality Jack had been in the Gripmans Bar and Diner, just starting on his steak and eggs and his second beer, when he was approached by a lanky youth in rather showy clothing.

  “Mr Jack Stevens?” the young man asked, his tone respectful enough though his accent was decidedly from the waterfront tenements, which combined with his excessively stylish clothing, marked him as a member of the Dead Hands, the largest of Chicago’s Irish gangs and currently run by the Tipwell contingent of the O’Shea clan.

  “None other,” Jack smiled back, his hand from habit slipping onto the revolver he carried in his right coat pocket. “Would you care to take a seat?”


  “Under normal circumstances that would be an honour, sir,” the young man responded, feeling in his element at this exchange of ‘gentlemanly niceties’, “but I have an urgent message for you, from Mr Henry Tipwell.” The youngster paused as if expecting a trumpet blast to sound at the mention of such an exalted name, but getting no reaction from Jack other than his swallowing another mouthful of steak, continued, “He asks that you go, as a matter of urgency, to the north side of the river and speak with his cousin, Mr Jaunty Tipwell, on a matter most urgent and delicate.”

  “Very well,” Jack happily agreed, wondering if this had to do with his missing day. “Why don’t you sit whilst I finish my food and you can explain how I find Mr Jaunty Tipwell.”

  “Mr Henry Tipwell,” the youth, bending closer to Jack’s right ear and lowering his tone, so as to sound more discrete, “asked me to say that it was his personal wish you treat this matter with urgency, even if you are already otherwise engaged.” Jack was torn, he hated to waste food especially when he was hungry, but there were few men that Hank would ask a personal favour from and fewer men still who would not have jumped up and rushed to Jaunty’s side at the first asking.

  It turned out that the youth took him not to Mr Jaunty Tipwell, who ran the north side river front and was intending to stay as far away as he could from any dead bodies, but to a disused warehouse in a decaying and generally deserted part of the riverbank. On the cab ride there the youth had explained how two young sailors, either lost or looking for a place of considerable privacy, had found the bodies and told a local bar owner who, not wanting to unnecessarily trouble the police, had passed the message on to the nearest Dead Hand. And so it went up through the ranks until it reached Hank who, not wanting to bother either the police or Mr O’Shea on such a matter, had thought of Jack.