No Pity For the Dead

by Nancy Herriman

  “If you are exhausted tomorrow, Grace, your stepmother will not be happy with me.”

  “She would never be unhappy with you, Mrs. Davies. She thinks you’re so strong and brave, and I can’t tell you how much she admires you,” Grace insisted. “I mean, who else would’ve been so daring as to discover her friend’s killer?”

  Addie, setting the bowl of stew on the table in the adjoining dining room, cleared her throat in disapproval. The story had been in every newspaper, for all reporters loved to write about the sensational or the merely strange. A nurse helping to find the killer of a Chinese prostitute had apparently fit both categories.

  “Yes, that,” said Celia sternly, dissuading any further conversation on the topic. It was best left buried in the past, since her success had truly only garnered Celia whispers and gossip.

  “Can we stay up for a little while longer, Cousin?” pleaded Barbara.

  “You may,” said Celia, conceding. “But not too late.”

  “Should I bring in some milk and shortbread?” Addie asked.

  The girls grinned.

  “Please do, Addie,” answered Celia, and went to sit at the dining room table.

  Barbara and Grace ran back to the piano and plopped onto the bench, Grace singing to Barbara’s tentative accompaniment. The scene brought to mind a quote: Two friends, two bodies with one soul inspired.

  An apt observation by Homer, she thought.

  She’d barely dipped her spoon into the mulligatawny when someone pounded on the front door.

  “Not another patient at this hour!” Addie called out from the kitchen before hurrying through the dining room on her way to the foyer. “I’m turning them away, ma’am. You’re closed.”

  It wasn’t a few seconds before she heard Addie scream. Celia jumped up and rushed through the parlor.

  “Stay there, girls,” she told Barbara and Grace, shutting the parlor doors on their startled expressions.

  Owen Cassidy stumbled across the threshold, gasping for breath. He was covered in coal dust and dirt from head to toe; the only pale parts on him were the whites of his wide green eyes.

  “Och, lad,” chastised Addie. “Dinna even think of coming inside—”

  “Ma’am! He’s dead!” he cried, gaping at Celia. “He’s dead!”

  “What nonsense are you blathering?” asked Addie.

  “The fellow in the cellar! He’s dead!”

  * * *

  “You are quite certain of what you saw, Owen?” said Celia, once the initial excitement had died down and the girls had gone upstairs despite Grace’s attempts to linger in the parlor and hear what else Owen had to declare.

  They were seated at the table in the kitchen, Owen munching a biscuit Addie had given him.

  “Yes, ma’am. Sure as I’m sitting here!” Owen declared, and wiped crumbs off the lapels of his filthy jacket. “We were digging for—we were digging in the cellar to, um, level it, me and Dan.”

  “Truly?” asked Celia. “And do you mean Dan Matthews? Maryanne Kelly’s brother?”

  “Och,” Addie muttered, shaking her head.

  “I forgot Dan’s sister is married to Mr. Kelly,” said Owen. Mr. Kelly supervised the crew working at Martin and Company, the crew that Owen belonged to. The crew that Grace Hutchinson’s father had hired to level the cellar floor, along with other tasks.

  “She is indeed,” said Celia. “And neither she nor her husband shall be happy to hear this piece of news about him.”

  “Wonder if Dan’ll have a job with Mr. Kelly much longer.” Owen paled and swallowed. “Wonder if I’ll have a job with Mr. Kelly much longer.”

  So did Celia. “So you and Dan Matthews were digging in the cellar . . . ,” she prompted.

  “And then my shovel hit something soft. It was some oilcloth. Dan pulled it back to see what it was covering, and when we bent down to look closer, I could see an arm sticking out.” He furrowed his brow. “I’m pretty sure it was an arm. Only it wasn’t a whole one. Some of it was chopped off, and it was all oozy and sorta blackish . . .”

  Addie gasped and collapsed onto the other chair. Pulling a handkerchief from her pocket, she pressed it to her mouth and breathed deeply, the linen fluttering against her chin with each exhalation.

  “Perhaps you are mistaken,” said Celia. There had to be an explanation for what Owen had seen. Because there simply couldn’t be a dead body buried in Martin and Company’s cellar. “Even if it was decaying flesh, it might not belong to a person.”

  “Now you’re suggesting someone’s burying animals in the basement?” asked Addie. “I dinna think that’s much better than a dead man, if I might say so, ma’am.”

  “Shh, Addie, keep your voice down. I do not want Grace to hear. This is her father’s business we are talking about, and the site of a potential crime, which is sure to raise a horrid scandal.”

  They could only protect Grace from the news for so long, however. And poor Jane. How might she react on hearing that a body had been found at her husband’s offices?

  “Maybe I am wrong, ma’am,” said Owen. “I mean, I ain’t had cause to see many dead folks, you know? Could be wrong.”

  “It is possible you are simply tired from your day’s labors, Owen, and mistook what you saw. But I think it best that I go and see for myself,” Celia said, and rose from her chair.

  “You’re doing what?” Addie screeched. “You need to tell Detective Greaves. Have the police look into it. It’s not your affair, ma’am.”

  “I will inform Mr. Greaves should the need arise,” said Celia, aware that she sounded cross. She’d convinced herself that it did not matter that the last time they’d spoken, Nicholas Greaves had softly touched her cheek and claimed they would see each other again. She had also convinced herself it did not matter that she had actually believed him.

  “Now, ma’am, just because you havna heard from him since March—”

  “My reluctance has nothing to do with that,” she said even more crossly.

  “So you say.”

  “It is simply that, if this is an error, I would prefer not to alert the newspaper reporters. They seem to have eyes and ears in the walls of the police station,” said Celia. “I will go with Owen and see what we have.”

  “I canna say I like this, ma’am.” Addie hadn’t given up. “Wandering about at this hour. With the saloons open.”

  “I have been out on the streets at this hour before. Besides, Owen will keep me safe.”

  Owen puffed his chest and scrambled to his feet. “You bet I will, ma’am!” He patted Addie’s shoulder. “Don’t you worry. I’ll protect Mrs. Davies!”

  Addie looked dubious. “You, a skinny fourteen-year-old boy, will protect her? Now you’ve both lost your minds!”

  * * *

  The building where Owen worked was located on Montgomery Street among the finest of the city’s establishments. With ornamented pediments and high arched windows, they were all towering structures of brick and granite and limestone, lining both sides of the roadway. Their awnings were furled for the night, shutters and blinds closed against the shadowed darkness, asleep like a tidy group of children tucked into bed. Martin and Company itself occupied a sedate two-story building that, despite its modest size, managed to evoke the soberness of the business contained within its walls. Here, Mr. Jasper Martin offered only the most desirable parcels in the most promising of neighborhoods, sure to return good money on a person’s investment. Here, the architectural design created by Mr. Abram Russell would be the envy of one’s fellows. Here, Mr. Frank Hutchinson would provide the best building crew available, true craftsmen.

  A dead body in the cellar did not in any way fit into the calculations of these men. Of that, Celia was certain.

  “How are we to get inside?” she asked Owen. Standing beneath the flaring gas of a streetlamp, the light it cast
dimmed by the fog settling between the buildings, they gathered curious looks from the passengers of the first-class carriages that traveled along this road, bound for a sumptuous meal at Etienne’s or the evening’s entertainment at the Metropolitan Theatre. A woman in workaday clothes and a raggedy teenaged boy staring at the front door of a business across the way had to look suspicious. Any second now, they would hear the tromp of a police officer’s boots coming in their direction.

  She smiled sweetly at a man in a frock coat and top hat who slowed to stare at them.

  “Good evening, sir,” she said, her proper English accent reassuring him that she, at least, was not a typical criminal.

  Owen tipped his cap at the fellow, and the man moved on.

  “Dan didn’t stop to lock up, ma’am. We were in a mighty hurry,” Owen murmured, and dashed across the road after a horse and rider had clopped past.

  Celia hiked her skirts and ran after him before she could change her mind about the folly they were pursuing. By the time she reached the building, Owen had already disappeared inside. Closing the front door behind her, Celia paused to let her eyes adjust to the dimness, the streetlamp’s already diminished glow muted further by the shades pulled over the large windows.

  “Owen?” she called out. Where had he gotten to so rapidly?

  Gingerly, she moved forward. The room was large, the back half partitioned into small offices by cut glass–topped dividers. Planks were stacked against the walls along with a quantity of gas fixtures. An orange glow from warm coals peeped around the gaps in the door of the box stove situated in the nearest corner. Construction debris, ladders, and holland drop cloths were everywhere, and the air smelled of fresh paint and sawed wood. The space was not at all sinister in appearance, but then she hadn’t been downstairs as yet.

  “Owen, where are you?” She took another step, evading a scattering of tenpenny nails spilled on the floor. “Owen!”

  “Here I am, Mrs. Davies.” Owen’s head popped around one of the dividers. “I thought I heard something when I came in, and I was just checking.”

  “You heard a noise,” she said, wishing her pulse would cease dancing a jig. Perhaps they should have stopped at the police station after all. Or at least contacted the neighborhood beat officer, even though the fellow would’ve asked uncomfortable questions about why they wanted to investigate the basement of Martin and Company.

  Owen gestured toward an open door at the rear of the room. “Here, ma’am. These are the steps to the cellar.”

  The door led into a small vestibule. One set of stairs descended into the cellar. She presumed that behind the closed door to their right a second set led to the upper floor. Owen had halted at the head of the cellar stairs, and she peered over his shoulder. A lantern glowed in the depths, and a sour smell filtered through the air. She’d encountered enough death in the army hospitals to know what that smell signified.

  “Dang! What is that stink?” Owen asked, digging around in his trouser pockets and locating a scrap of checked cotton. He covered his nose with it.

  “Didn’t you notice the smell before?” she asked, retrieving the handkerchief she’d thought to bring along and holding it to her face. Perhaps the body had not released its stench until the oilcloth had been peeled away.

  “I was choking on coal dust, ma’am. Guess I didn’t.” He scrunched his nose. “But I do now.”

  “Let us make this quick, then. I do not doubt I shall confirm what you saw earlier.”

  Celia drew in a quick breath and descended the stairs behind him. There were mounds of dirt everywhere, two discarded shovels, a lantern teetering on the uneven ground . . . and a large gaping hole with a man-sized bundle exposed in its cavity. The dark discolorations of putrefaction had set in. Additionally, she could see the reddish blue stains of pooled blood on the underside of the torso, partly twisted out of the grave.

  “I thought you only saw an arm,” she said.

  “Dan and me didn’t leave it like this,” said Owen, his voice muffled by the scrap of cloth.

  The stench was overpowering, and Owen retched.

  “If you didn’t leave it like this, then someone else—” Celia paused and listened. Was that a noise overhead? It had sounded like footsteps. “Does anyone live upstairs in this building?”

  Owen shook his head and wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve. “The bosses’ offices are up there. That’s it.”

  Celia heard the noise again, the rap of heels against wood, moving quickly. Her heart pounded. She was trapped in a cellar with a mere boy, while overhead someone who might not want them to know about a buried body could be blocking their only safe exit.

  “Whoever attempted to dig up this body is still here,” she whispered.

  “He’s trying to get away!” Owen reached into his right boot, pulled out a knife, and ran up the stairs. “I’ll catch him!”

  “No, Owen!”

  Celia grabbed the lantern and chased after him, tripping over her skirts. She reached the vestibule just as he raced out the rear door. “Owen, stop!”

  She stumbled through a small courtyard and into the narrow dirt alleyway behind the buildings. It was dark and cloaked in fog. And Owen had disappeared from sight.

  “Bloody . . .” Clutching her shawl, Celia leaned against the doorframe. “Now what?”

  She wasn’t about to run out into the alleyway herself, with only a lantern as a weapon and no idea what sort of dangerous maniac she might encounter.

  It wasn’t long, however, before she heard the sound of running feet. She straightened and prepared to dash inside and bolt the door if the feet belonged to someone more menacing than Owen.

  “I lost him,” a voice called out, and Owen materialized through the mist.

  Celia released a breath. “Thank goodness you’re safe.”

  “Couldn’t see who it was, though.” Owen folded his knife and returned it to the safekeeping of his boot. “We’ve got to tell the police now, don’t we?”

  “Most certainly we do. There is a dead body downstairs.”

  “Just don’t tell ’em what I was doing down there, ma’am.”

  “I thought you and Dan Matthews were leveling the floor,” she said. He evaded her gaze, suddenly finding a spot on the ground very interesting. “That was not what you were doing, was it?”

  He glanced up, a sheepish look on his face. “You won’t yell if I say, will you, ma’am?”

  “I won’t yell.”

  “We were digging for gold.”

  “Owen!” she yelled. “Mr. Hutchinson shall be furious!” Gad.

  “I know, I know! It wasn’t right! But Dan told me I had to help and if I told him no, he was gonna tell Mr. Martin it was all my idea and then I’d be in trouble!”

  “You have gotten yourself into trouble one way or the other, Owen,” she said.

  “Mr. Greaves is gonna throw me in the calaboose, ain’t he?” he asked, squinting down the alleyway as if debating whether to make a run for it.

  “I have no idea what he shall decide to do,” she said, wondering how she would extract both Owen and Maryanne’s brother from this mess. Of the two, she certainly cared more about saving Owen.

  “Ask him to take it easy on me, okay? He’ll listen to you,” said Owen. “He’s sweet on you, ma’am.”

  “I very much doubt that those are his sentiments, Owen,” she said, suppressing the desire to ask him why he thought so. Foolish, Celia. Don’t be foolish. “Might the person you chased have been Mr. Matthews? Perhaps he returned to remove the body.”

  But that was not logical. After all, he had invited Owen to dig up the cellar.

  “Don’t think so, given how scared he was when we found it. Don’t think he’ll ever come back here.”

  “Do you have any idea who the buried person might be? Has anyone you know of gone missing?”

>   “Nope,” he said, and then his eyes lit with an idea. “Hey! I wonder if it’s that fella Mr. Hutchinson was having a shouting match with a few weeks ago. Ain’t seen him around lately. Thought they’d come to blows that afternoon. But that wouldn’t have been fair. The other man was missing part of an arm. Oh!” He locked eyes with Celia.

  Just like the body downstairs.

  Bloody . . . More than Owen and Dan Matthews were in trouble now. “We are going to have to inform the police.”

  “Durn.”

  “Indeed.”

  * * *

  Blood. There was so much blood and pain. Hot. Burning. His left arm on fire.

  He heard his name called. “Nick!”

  The kid in the gray coat hadn’t moved. Just stared. Like he couldn’t believe what he’d done. And then all of a sudden there was an explosion, and half of the kid’s head was gone, blown apart like a melon hit with a hammer. A giant red melon.

  The ground rushed up, felt cold and hard beneath his knees. He looked over at Jack, running toward him, his gun still smoking. Ah. So that was what had happened to the kid.

  And then came another explosion, from out of the woods, and Jack flew backward as easily as a doll tossed by a child. He fumbled for his gun with his right hand, his good hand, raised it just as the reb soldier broke through the cover of the underbrush and aimed.

  He screamed. He knew he screamed as he pulled the trigger on his Colt. Pulled again. Again until there wasn’t a reb soldier and the click of the hammer meant the chamber was empty.

  “Jack. Hold on. I’ll be right there.”

  He crawled to where Jack lay on the ground, squirmed over rocks and tree roots and broken branches, the musky damp of churned-up earth mixing with the acrid smell of gunpowder.

  “Jack. I said I’d be right there. See?”

  Jack’s gaze shifted to his face. There was blood seeping from his mouth. “Dang, Frank’ll be mad.”

  “The hell with your cousin, Jack.”

  Jack chuckled. Tried to chuckle. A gush of blood choked off the sound, and he drowned in a gurgle.