BANG!
An upward flash of powder & the report of a gunshot stopped the two youths.
“Get away from him!” cried a man’s voice. “Get right away!”
The Rev. C.V. Anthony was pointing a .41 caliber single-shot Deringer towards the sky & glaring at the crowd. Everybody backed off.
The Reverend pocketed his still-smoking piece & helped me to my feet. “Tell me you did not set that fire, P.K.,” he said in a low voice.
“I did not set that fire,” I gasped, only now getting my breath back. “I had nothing to do with it.”
“He’s lying!” said the first stable boy. “Shandy and me saw him lurking by the back stall where the fire started!”
“I was trying to help a girl hiding out in the stables. I rescued your horses,” I said. “I did not set the fire.”
“Then who did?” asked Mr. Joseph H. Gardiner.
I said, “It was a hatless man wearing a cloak!”
“What hatless man?”
“I do not know. But he was tall and slim with a billy goat beard.”
“A likely story!” cried Mr. Joseph H. Gardiner.
“I say we lynch him!” cried a new voice.
“I got a piece of rope!” cried another.
Some C Street spectators had come over to join my persecutors.
“For shame!” cried the Rev. in his preacher’s voice. “Attempting to lynch a poor child without even a trial. I will take him to the Marshal’s where he will await fair justice.”
Once again I felt myself lifted bodily up into the air but this time I was folded over a Christian shoulder. As he pushed through the crowd, I had to hold on to my slouch hat lest it fall off. I heard angry voices shouting & I even felt a few fists pummel my back until the Rev. C.V. Anthony quoted John 8:7 in his preacher’s voice, “‘He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone’!”
At this the crowds parted and allowed him to hurry south along C Street and then turn uphill on Sutton. It was almost deserted there. I guess everybody in town had congregated by the burnt stable.
Now that we were away from the bloodthirsty mob, I started to struggle. “Let me go!” I said. “There is a girl I have to help. Do not take me to the Deputy Marshal!”
The Rev. C.V. Anthony stopped & I felt myself swung down. The sloping road slammed the soles of my feet through my thin moccasins. My sore shoulder throbbed as he gripped it hard.
“What girl?” he said. “What are you talking about?”
“There was an Eye Witness to Short Sally’s murder,” I said. “And the Killer is out to get her.”
“Who is this Eye Witness?” the Rev. asked me.
“A Negro girl. A lady’s maid,” I said. “About ten years old, wearing a nightdress and bonnet. I can prove I am not lying.” I pointed to a narrow space I had discovered earlier that day. “We can go through that alley, past the outhouses of the Fashion Saloon and between the backs of some other buildings.”
“I remember Sally’s little serving girl,” said the Rev. “You say she witnessed the deed? She knows the identity of the killer?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “But she has a fever and might die if we do not get her to a doctor. Please will you help me?”
Ledger Sheet 29
I COUNTED MYSELF LUCKY on three counts that evening.
First, that the Methodist pastor, C.V. Anthony, happened to be present at the scene of the fire & saved me from a mob intent on burning and/or lynching me.
Second, that although of a slim build, he was strong enough to carry Martha in her barley sack down to Doc Pinkerton’s.
Third, that Doc Pinkerton agreed to care for Martha, even though she reeked of urine, sweat and horse manure. I know now that he is a good Christian.
We took Martha upstairs, and once again, I gently pinched her cheeks to wake her. I was eager to know if the Killer spoke with a German accent so that I could confirm it was Ludwig Hamm. Of the nine Suspects on my list, he was the only German.
But Martha was still burning up with fever & would not be roused. Doc Pinkerton left her in Mrs. Pinkerton’s care & walked us downstairs & told me to come back around 10:00 a.m. the following day to see if her fever might have broken.
The Rev. C.V. Anthony headed downhill to his own dinner while I set off through the crowds along C Street towards the International Hotel and my appointment with Jace. But I had not taken three steps along the boardwalk when a thought struck me.
It was a thought so terrible that my innards seemed to fall right down into my legs.
Charles Volney Anthony was No. 9 on my list of suspects. If my short time in Virginia had taught me one thing, it was this: do not trust anybody!
I thought, “Sally ran into an old friend the night she was killed and the Reverend is a new arrival in town!”
I also thought, “What was the Rev. doing at the scene of the fire?”
And finally, “What if he set the fire, discarded his cloak & pretended to save me so I would trust him and tell him where Martha was hiding?”
The Methodist pastor, C.V. Anthony, now knew where she was, and even which room she was in, for he had carried her upstairs.
If the Rev. was the Killer, he could simply sneak back at the dead of night with a ladder, open the window & strangle her at his leisure.
I needed to move Martha one more time.
I needed to find an even safer place than Doc Pinkerton’s.
Do not trust anybody. But I had to trust someone.
My first thought was Big Gussie. I was pretty sure I could trust her, but would the killer think to look for Martha there? I needed someone I could trust who was not too obvious.
I closed my eyes & fired a prayer like an arrow up to the Lord. I had barely whispered “Amen” before a name fell into my head.
It was a surprising name but upon reflection I reckoned it was my best bet.
I turned & went back to Doc Pinkerton’s & knocked on the door & when he opened it, I quickly explained the problem. He was not convinced that Martha was in danger, but I insisted. At last, he agreed to send her on to a safer place.
I told him how to recognize this person when he came to collect Martha, and I shared my simple plan.
“All right,” said Doc Pinkerton at last. “Mrs. Pinkerton is giving Martha a sponge bath so at least she will be clean. And if you give me the address of your Safe Haven I will check on her tomorrow morning.”
(You may think I am being Mysterious in my description of these events, but I do not want to confide Martha’s whereabouts even to these pages, lest the Killer get hold of them.)
All I can say is this: I ran as fast as I could to the place where I hoped to find my ally & sure enough he was there. As I expected, he agreed to help. I even followed him back to Doc Pinkerton’s & watched from the shadows as he took delivery of a “pile of dirty laundry” & wheeled it away in a wheelbarrow. Only when I was sure that nobody was shadowing him did I make my way back to my office.
I knew it was well past 8:00 p.m. and that I was going to be sorely late for my dinner appointment with Poker Face Jace, but there was no helping it.
It was lively up on B Street with music spilling out of saloons & people crowding the boardwalk. I went into my office & lit a lamp & locked the door behind me. I did not pull down the blind so that if someone was spying they would see me take the lamp into my back room & think I had retired for the night.
But I did not retire for the night. I peeled off my still-damp coat & changed into a disguise.
I have four disguises, viz:
Blanket Indian Disguise—old Paiute blanket, dusty slouch hat & tin begging cup
Chinese Boy Disguise—blue pajamas, clogs & flat straw hat with false pigtail
Prim Girl Disguise—pink calico dress, bonnet & white button-up boots
Rich Boy Disguise—coat, waistcoat, black brogans & plug hat
Nos. 2, 3 & 4 were next door in the clothing cupboard of Mr. Isaiah Coffin’s Ambrotype & Photograp
hic Gallery.
However, Disguise No. 1 was hanging from one of the pegs on the wall.
I pulled it down & wrapped the Paiute blanket around me. Then I tugged the shapeless felt hat down low & grabbed my tin coffee cup.
I could not risk going out the front door of my office dressed as a Paiute, so I offered up a prayer, put the tin cup inside my shirt, slid out of my window & descended by means of that rickety ladder. My foot almost went through the fifth rung.
I thought, “I must buy a new ladder.”
And also, “I better remember not to empty my chamber pot out here anymore.”
When I reached the bottom, I waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. Then I picked my way through tin cans and other worse things to the Coroner’s alley. Emerging onto C Street, I turned left onto the busy boardwalk & made my way to a nondescript entrance of the International Hotel. This plain white door is used by tradesmen and delivery boys. You may have walked past it a thousand times without realizing that it is another way into the International Hotel. Bare wooden stairs carry you up to a plush carpeted hallway that leads to luxury rooms.
When I got to the door with the brass No. 3 on it, I looked up and down the hall to make sure nobody saw a grubby Blanket Indian going into Jace’s Rooms. I gave the secret knock on the door and when I heard Stonewall’s grunt I went in.
“Where you been?” said Jace. He was standing by the fireplace near Stonewall, who was seated.
“It is almost nine,” said Jace. “We been waiting for you.”
Jace is good at hiding his emotions, but I could tell he was riled because he blew his cigar smoke strongly down. That was something he himself had taught me.
I said, “Sorry I am late. I got delayed by that fire over at the Flora Temple Livery Stable.”
“You got to allow extra time for traffic,” said Jace. “Virginia is getting busier every day.”
“It was not just the traffic,” I said. “The proprietor and two stable hands accused me of setting that fire. I nearly got burned alive and also lynched.”
Jace asked me to tell what happened & I did so over dinner. They had already eaten, but there was a kind of tin hat over my plate and the food was almost warm. They sat drinking coffee while I ate a hearty meal of pork chops, greens and corn on the cob. I was hungry and it was good.
Through mouthfuls of food I told them everything that had happened so far that day from the rock baby in the parcel to finding Martha in the stables and getting her to safety.
Finally Jace said, “So you think the man you saw in the stables—the hatless man in the cloak—was Short Sally’s Killer?”
“It might have been the Rev. C.V. Anthony,” I replied. “And I am also suspicious of Mr. Isaiah Coffin. But my number one suspect is the fireman I was telling you about: the barkeeper over at the Young America Saloon, Mr. Ludwig Hamm.”
“What makes you think Hamm is the killer?”
I said, “He was crazy in love with Short Sally. She had a sharp tongue and had already rejected him more than once. Also, he has a fiery temper.”
Jace finished his coffee and took a Mascara brand cigar from his breast pocket. “A fiery temper don’t make someone a killer,” he said, striking a match on the bottom of the table. “Though Sally’s manner of death does suggest a crime of passion.”
“What do you mean?”
Jace held the flame to the end of the cigar and puffed, turning it to get it burning even. “Like I told you,” he said, “when Short Sally was murdered last week, the first rumor was that she’d had her throat cut. Cutting someone’s throat is messy, but more importantly it is coldhearted. The killer usually does it because it is quick and silent and he needs something.”
I nodded.
Jace puffed some more. “Strangling, on the other hand, is usually a hot-blooded crime.”
I thought about my main suspect in the murder of Miss Sally Sampson, the hot-tempered Mr. Ludwig Hamm, and I rubbed my ear, still sore from his boxing it.
“To strangle someone,” continued Jace, “you have to get your hands directly on that person’s throat and squeeze. It takes a while to get the job done,” he added. “It requires a different frame of mind from the other.”
His voice sounded kind of thick & I looked at him hard. He was blowing smoke slowly down, a thing people do when they are sad.
“Have you ever strangled a man or cut his throat?” I asked.
“Yes,” said Poker Face Jace, without meeting my gaze. “I have done both those things.”
Ledger Sheet 30
YOU STRANGLED A MAN and cut a throat?” I asked Jace.
Jace nodded. “It was wartime.”
“The war back east?” I said.
He shook his head. “The Mexican War. Fifteen years ago.”
I waited in case he had anything more to add.
He examined his cigar.
“I had to cut a sentry’s throat once,” he said, “in order to keep him quiet. A few weeks later I found myself in a pitched battle. I was out of ammunition and my rifle was gone. We were fighting hand to hand. A man went for me. It was either me or him…” Jace trailed off & looked down at the table. “The first method is cold-blooded. The second is hot-blooded.” He glanced over at Stonewall, who had been sitting silently throughout the meal. “Neither is pleasant. It is an awful thing to kill a man.”
I nodded. “Even in self-defense,” I said.
I remembered the face of the man I had killed. I also remembered how easy it had been to pull out my seven-shooter and point it at Belle Donne when she startled me over at Topliffe’s.
“What about a gun?” I asked. “What frame of mind do you have to be in to shoot someone?”
Jace shrugged. “Scared, angry, butterfingered,” he said. “But I’ll wager most shootings in this town are done by men in the grip of alcohol.” He rubbed his forehead, then looked up at me. “What I am trying to say is that it appears Sally’s murder was a crime of passion or anger. If someone had been planning to rob her, I reckon he would have used a quicker method. She either said something or did something to make a man crazy with rage.”
I nodded. “That is what I think. I think Mr. Ludwig Hamm proposed marriage and she laughed at him and maybe said something hurtful. So he strangled her. Then he saw Martha and he knew he had to kill her, too, because she had witnessed the crime and might tell. He chanced to see her this morning when she came to me for help. I reckon he has been shadowing me ever since. That is why he set the stable on fire. To make it seem accidental.”
“You think he followed you to the stable?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I thought you said he tended bar.”
“I did.”
“Then how could he loiter for hours in the street shadowing you?”
I had no answer for that. But Jace had planted a Seed of Doubt in my mind.
Jace examined his cigar. “Were you followed here?”
“No, sir. I snuck out my back window and kept to the darkest shadows. Plus I am in Disguise.”
“What about after the fire? Could the killer have followed you and the Reverend down to Doc Pinkerton’s?”
“I thought he might try,” I said, “so I followed the Reverend back to his house. I made sure nobody else was shadowing him. And then I got another person to take Martha from Doc Pinkerton’s to a Safe Haven. Just in case it was the Reverend and not Ludwig Hamm who killed her.”
“Good thinking,” said Jace. “Where will you go from here? With the Investigation, I mean?”
“As soon as Martha is better,” I said, “I am going to ask her what accent the Killer spoke with. If he spoke with a German accent, then the Killer is probably Ludwig Hamm.”
“Unless it’s someone not on your list,” said Jace.
Jace had just planted another Seed of Doubt in my mind.
Stonewall pushed his chair back & stood up & went into his bedchamber. He had not spoken a word & his coffee sat cold & untouched. I heard him peeing int
o the chamber pot.
“What is wrong with Stonewall?” I said in a low voice.
“He is in a brown study,” said Jace.
I said, “You have a study in there? I thought it was another bedchamber.”
“It is a figure of speech,” said Jace. “It means he is low in his spirits.”
“Why is Stonewall low in his spirits?” I asked.
“The news from Maryland,” said Jace. “That terrible battle at Sharpsburg, which the newspapers call Antietam.”
“That was last week.”
“There are reports coming in of terrible losses. Every day the number goes higher. The latest estimate is twenty thousand.”
“Twenty thousand men killed?” I said.
Jace nodded. “They say the bodies are all piled up in bloated heaps and not even buried. There are photographs in New York showing corpses with blackened faces, distorted features, and expressions most agonizing. Some people say that battle will end the war.”
“Jace?” I said. “Why are they fighting?”
Jace sighed. “There are a lot of reasons,” he said. “But the main dispute is about the right to own slaves. The North wants to make the South set their slaves free. The Confederates—that is, the Southerners—reckon they will not survive without slave labor. Plus we don’t like being told what to do.”
“You’re a Reb?” I said.
He sighed again. “I am a Southerner who has seen too much death and killing.”
Stonewall’s bedchamber door opened & he came back into the room.
“We don’t have time for a full lesson this evening,” Jace told me in a businesslike tone of voice, “but in light of this recent spate of shootings I am going to give you a useful piece of advice.”
Stonewall had pulled a chair up by the fire & was fingering a narrow felt pouch.
“Here is my tip,” said Jace. “Just before a person is about to do something big or dangerous, they usually take a deep breath in.”
I nodded. That made sense.
“Sometimes,” he said, “you will see their whole chest swell up, but that don’t always happen. What does always happen is that their nostrils get a little wider a split second before they mean to act. This will often tip you off that they are about to throw a punch or draw their piece.”
The Case of the Petrified Man Page 11
