In the Shadow of Gotham

by Pintoff, Stefanie

  “I can make some inferences from these photographs,” Peter said, “though whether they’ll help you is another matter.”

  “Go on,” I said. I certainly hoped something he had discovered would help, for the locket otherwise seemed a dead end. While Peter had developed our photographs in his darkroom, I had dusted the small locket for prints. I found none that were usable, unsurprising given how dirty the locket had been.

  He pulled the locket photographs gingerly from his pocket and turned the two pictures toward us. “As to the type of print, though the photographs are small, I was able to determine that they are what we call Woodburytypes.”

  Joe and I simply listened, knowing Peter would go on to explain what that meant.

  “The Woodburytype is a process that reproduces a high-quality photograph and, to the untrained eye, may look exactly like a gelatin silver print. And both processes have much in common: This process is used when the photographer wants to produce a print that will last for years without any loss in quality. And it allows photographs to be enlarged with no loss of detail whatsoever.”

  He sighed, closed the locket, and returned it to me.

  “But the fact remains it is a Woodburytype—which for your purposes is significant in two respects. First, I would expect there to be other, much larger prints of these photographs in existence. Most photographs made with this process are large prints suitable for gluing into luxury albums. You wouldn’t normally choose a sophisticated development process like this if your only goal was to create small photographs.”

  He paused a moment. “And second, because these photos are Woodburytypes, we know they were taken at least five years ago. The Woodburytype process was discontinued in 1900 because its cost had become too high. I myself stopped doing it even earlier.”

  Joe breathed a soft, low whistle, as he settled back in his chair. “So she has known the man in the locket for at least five years—and yet her closest cousin could not identify him!”

  “Looks that way,” Peter said.

  I suspected I already knew the answer to my question, but I had to ask anyway. “Both photographs were taken at the same time, by the same photographer?”

  “In my opinion they were,” he said, and his opinion was unequivocal. “You’ll notice the backdrop, the lighting, and even what I call the tone of each picture seems markedly similar. If they were taken in the New York area, it may be possible to locate the photographer, since the expensive nature of the process would necessarily limit the number of photographers offering it.”

  Our conversation continued along these lines, exploring different possibilities, until we were interrupted by a commotion near the front of the bar. After a moment, I heard my name called. I hastened to join Mrs. O’Malley by the door, where a delivery boy waited with a telegram for me. He had attempted to come inside, but had been hindered by Mrs. O’Malley’s inflexible idea that boys should be at least sixteen years old before they were permitted to enter a bar. After giving the boy a coin—well earned for tracking me down at this time of night—I returned to the table, where the three of us read the telegram together.

  Received news of murder in Dobson. Must meet immediately.

  Know suspect.

  Your office 7:30 A.M.

  —Alistair Sinclair, Esq.

  “Alistair Sinclair.” Joe tried out the name, practically snorting as he chuckled. “And the man paid good money to sign himself ‘Esquire’! Either he’s so rich he doesn’t care about the expense, or he’s that full of himself. How do you know him?” He looked at me, one eyebrow arched, obviously suspicious that I had gone behind his back and contacted Alistair Sinclair about our case.

  “I don’t,” I said. “I have never heard of the man—and I have no idea how he has heard of me. I can’t even imagine how news of the crime itself could travel so fast.”

  It was the truth, though Joe would think what he would. Others repeatedly told me that Joe was a good-hearted man and would come around in time. But he perceived me as a younger, smarter man destined to take his place. I did not dislike Joe, but I did chafe under his constant questioning of my motives and habits.

  I glanced at my watch; it was now almost half past midnight. I made my excuses and left Joe and Peter talking quietly, for there was unfinished work I wanted to complete before the night was over.

  I folded the telegram into my pocket, stopped by the office to make a brief telephone call, and then caught the trolley home straightaway. But I could not stop thinking of Alistair Sinclair’s strange message as the ache in my arm pounded unrelentingly and kept me from sleep well until dawn began to show its earliest light.

  Wednesday, November 8, 1905

  CHAPTER 4

  After a fitful night’s sleep, I rose early and headed toward my office, buying a cup of coffee and the morning Times on the way. I skimmed the paper before beginning my own work. MCCLELLAN REELECTED MAYOR—HEARST WILL CONTEST was its headline, and multiple stories about yesterday’s election fraud filled its pages. The Tammany machine toughs had intimidated would-be Hearst voters, meting out terrible beatings to keep them from voting. One Hearst supporter had actually lost a finger in such an altercation, the Times reported. And multiple boxes of ballots had ended up in the East River rather than the election office. All disgusting, but unsurprising. Anyone who knew Tammany boss Silent Charlie Murphy knew he would do whatever it took to ensure his candidate won.

  But the case at hand was what demanded my attention this morning. I read through the contents of a report left by Jimmy Meade, the detective from Yonkers who had taken charge of the grounds search and interview efforts last night. As I tried to focus upon his summary of interviews with the Wingates’ neighbors, questions about my strange appointment with Alistair Sinclair continued to unsettle me. Why had he contacted me? By all rights, he should have reached out to Joe, my boss. And what made him think he knew anything about who may have murdered Sarah Wingate? There had been no similar murders in the city in recent months. I had placed a call to Declan Mulvaney, my former partner in the city, late last night to check. Mulvaney had been working late at the office because of the unrest surrounding yesterday’s city election, but he had nonetheless taken the time to search the department’s files for me.

  I forced my attention back to the interviews, ascertaining that no information of importance had come from them. The Braithwaites next door had been home at the time, but did not remember hearing or seeing anything unusual. Elderly Mr. Dreyer across the street, who spent all his waking hours in the rocking chair on his wraparound front porch, had noticed a strange man at the Wingate house in the recent past. But that had been at least three months ago. I resolved to follow up with Mr. Dreyer and the Wingates about the sighting, but given the time lag, it did not seem the sort of detail that would crack open the case.

  The common theme in each interview was that around half past three, almost everyone had heard the strange wail Miss Wingate had described. It was an interesting coincidence, but not evidence. Generally speaking, no neighbor had offered any detail of substance—only a composite picture that verified the whereabouts of all concerned, including the Wingate house hold help. We had proof no one lied, but little else.

  I hoped Joe would have better luck discovering information that would help us. He was attending Dr. Fields’s autopsy of Sarah Wingate, which had been scheduled early, at five o’clock this morning. With a sigh of frustration, I turned to place the folder in my file cabinet when the steady sound of footsteps on the stairwell informed me that my visitor had arrived.

  In stepped a middle-aged man with a meticulously trimmed mustache and dark hair just beginning to gray around the temples. He was fashionably dressed; his expensive leather shoes were polished to a high gloss and his coat was made of fine, soft, dark wool. He immediately took full mea sure of me with intense blue eyes, and flashed a charismatic smile that revealed perfectly white, even teeth. When he spoke, his voice was very smooth and cultured, reflecting a muted Eur
opean accent.

  “Detective Ziele, I presume?” He gripped my right hand and shook it firmly—too firmly. Through sheer willpower, I forced myself not to wince. “I am Alistair Sinclair. You should call me Alistair.”

  In manner and voice, he seemed far more cosmopolitan than his English name had led me to expect. I would learn in coming days that he had traveled extensively in addition to spending part of his childhood in Rome.

  He removed his coat and hat. “May I?” He gestured toward the wooden coat rack by the door.

  “Please,” I said.

  “It was good of you to meet me on such short notice; I can imagine how busy you are after yesterday’s events. I promise to take up no more of your time than necessary.”

  I made a polite reply, even as I reflected that his telegram had given me little choice in the matter.

  “Shall we sit?” Although he claimed the guest chair across from my desk, Alistair conducted himself as though the office were his and not mine. Yet once we were seated, facing one another, he regarded me silently and seemed unsure how to proceed.

  “I admit—I was surprised to hear from you last night,” I began. “Never mind your claim to have important information about a suspect, I can’t make out how you got word of this murder so quickly.”

  “Ah, yes.” He leaned back easily, having anticipated the question. “I’ve found it very useful over the years to develop good sources of information—among the police, the press, the fire wardens. In this case,” he confided, “it was one of my newspaper contacts at the World who came through with news of the murder last night. Amazing, given how preoccupied they were with yesterday’s election.” He nodded to the Times article on my desk. “But those fellows are unstoppable when it comes to newsgathering.” He smiled congenially, assuming we understood each other.

  “True enough,” I said. News reporters could be downright predatory. I knew not all of them were so single-minded in their pursuit of a story as to behave indecently, but I did not hold them in high regard.

  “How much did you learn about yesterday’s murder?” I asked. I wanted to be sure he knew what he was talking about and was not wasting my time.

  He folded his arms in front of him and recited the facts of the case. “A young woman, mid-twenties, was killed late afternoon at a local residence. She suffered multiple lacerations and bruising.” He went on to detail other relevant facts that allayed any doubts I had about his being fully informed.

  “And what about this local case attracts the attention of a professor from Columbia Law School?”

  He looked at me with both surprise and respect, for he had told me nothing of who he was or what he did for a living. “It would appear you have cultivated your own sources of information. Those individuals who described you as exceptionally smart and resourceful were quite right.”

  I never would have put it that way. And I was very curious as to whom he had spoken about me. But I could not give Alistair the satisfaction of knowing it.

  My own inquiry into his background had been rather simple: A brief telephone call last night to the Seventh Precinct had produced a basic outline of Alistair Sinclair’s life. Personally, he had recently celebrated his fifty-second birthday; socially, he was from a wealthy family who counted themselves among Mrs. Astor’s New York Four Hundred; and professionally, he held advanced degrees from both Harvard and Columbia, where he had spent the past ten years as part of their law faculty with a specialty in criminal law. Mulvaney had dug up those facts for me and even remembered one thing more, since it was the tough Irish cop’s guilty pleasure to follow the society pages in the Journal. He recalled that Alistair was separated from his wife, who had moved abroad after their only son died tragically two years ago.

  “Can’t remember how the son died, though,” Mulvaney had said. “I do recall the obituary mentioned he died while on an archeological expedition in Greece.”

  These scraps of information had sated some of my curiosity about the man, but they could not explain his interest in this local murder case. I pressed him once again to explain himself.

  “As you’ve already learned, I am a teacher of criminal law,” he said, stretching his long legs out to his side to become more comfortable, “but I consider myself a criminologist. Do you know the term?”

  “It means you study crime?” I hazarded a guess.

  “Yes—but with a specific focus on criminals and their behavior.” He leaned in closer toward me, and I grew uncomfortable under his direct gaze. “When you arrest a man for a particularly heinous crime, don’t you often wonder why he did it?”

  I had to confess I did not.

  “Most of the time there’s a pretty simple motive,” I said. “Revenge, jealousy, greed . . . those are the reasons why most criminals kill or steal.”

  “Yes, you’re absolutely correct in a general sense. But have you never wondered specifically—why him? To put it a different way, suppose fifty men are in dire economic straits, equally desperate for money. But only one will kill to get it. Fifty women may find themselves unhappily married. But only one of them will poison her husband. Why? What makes him—or her—different from the forty-nine others who don’t resort to criminal acts?”

  He continued to talk. “I’m taking part in a broader research effort pioneered by criminal scientists in Germany, France, and Italy to further our understanding of criminal behavior by using the collective wisdom of different fields, including sociology, psychology, anatomy, and, of course, law. Together with like-minded colleagues, I’ve established a research center at Columbia to answer some important questions. Why do criminals behave as they do? What motivates them? What deters them? What actions are necessary to redirect their behavior, or rehabilitate them?”

  His hands gesticulated to emphasize his words as he talked. “Imagine the good we could do if only we understood the answers to these questions. If we could identify those people who were predisposed—or simply more susceptible than others to committing crimes—then perhaps we could intervene before they ever committed their first criminal act. Or, if we could take a repeat offender and figure out how to rehabilitate him, then you can imagine how much more efficiently our courts and penal systems would operate.”

  I did not mention how strongly I disagreed with some of his assumptions, which were grounded in a view of human nature I did not share. I believed some people were capable of doing bad things, plain and simple. Sometimes even otherwise decent people were quite capable of behaving criminally when pushed far enough. Unbidden, my mind filled with images from the Slocum disaster, where with rescue efforts under way, I had witnessed normally law-abiding men shamelessly trample over women and young children in their efforts to save themselves. If this were evidence of the human nature of the more civilized among us, then what hope could there be for violent offenders?

  But this was not the time for such discussion. A young woman was dead, and her murderer had yet to be identified, much less apprehended. Alistair was beginning to take our conversation in a direction more theoretical than was useful for my purposes. I needed to hear only what practical information he might offer to solve this case.

  “This is well and good, but today I am investigating an actual murder committed by an unknown assailant. I need to know how, exactly, you can help me,” I said.

  Alistair spun his chair forward. “It is likely I hold the key to your murder investigation. I know the man responsible. It is someone I have interviewed as part of my research.” He placed a small black-and-white picture on my desk. “It is this man. Michael Fromley.”

  I stared at him in silence for a few moments while I thought about what he had just said. I half glanced at the photograph before I pushed it back toward him.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and shook my head, “but I think we misunderstand each other. The murder I’m investigating happened just yesterday. Late yesterday. So any incriminating information that came out of one of your past interviews could not possibly be relevant.”<
br />
  “You do misunderstand,” Alistair said, “so please bear with me a moment while I explain.” He folded his hands and asked, “Are you familiar with Eugene Vidocq and his way of thinking about the criminal act?”

  He continued talking—almost lecturing, really—before I had a chance to think, much less answer his question.

  “Vidocq was a notorious French thief. After his last arrest, the police made him a unique offer: if he wished to avoid jail, he might put his skills to good use and join the police. He eventually became chief of the Sûreté, and you may have heard of him in your line of work because he is responsible for so many of your modern practices, such as having policemen work in disguise. Or ‘undercover,’ as you would say.”

  Alistair got up to pace, once again gesticulating with his hands. “He is also famous for creating a filing system—but no ordinary filing system. For each criminal his department arrested, he recorded information about their age, appearance, and background as well as the details of their crimes. Vidocq showed us that every criminal has a certain kind of behavior pattern—or style—that remains consistent in each crime he commits. It could be a certain kind of weapon or a specific kind of victim. It might even be a habit of choosing a particular place or time of day.”

  Alistair sat down again. I began to perceive that his constant alterations between sitting and pacing were a sign of his boundless energy, which was difficult for him to contain.

  “So do you mean to imply,” I asked, trying to understand, “that what you’ve heard about the murder here in Dobson is similar in style to criminal behavior that you’ve previously encountered?”

  “That’s exactly it!” Alistair beamed at me, pleased to have gotten his point across.

  I had to admit that Alistair’s argument made some sense. I had not heard of Vidocq, but I knew from experience that the gang-style murders I had previously encountered all followed certain patterns; each gang’s handiwork was unique.