The Blackest Bird

by Joel Rose

  The first possibility struck him as the strongest. Mary’s death was related to some band of local riffraff. Both coroners seemed to corroborate the facts. Mary Rogers’ body had been violated by several men, perhaps as many as three, perhaps more. On any given summer Sunday afternoon numbers of hooligans were about, rowing over from Manhattan or taking the steam ferry.

  Once again Hays went over the facts. On the Sunday, the last day Mrs. Rogers was to see her daughter alive, Mary left the Nassau Street address at 10 a.m. Church was out, and at that hour many people were on the street. She was a beautiful young woman, well known from her employ at Anderson’s. Hays judged tens if not hundreds of people must know her by sight.

  Someone must have noticed her.

  He called Sergeant McArdel into his office and ordered him to dispatch a constable each to the Evening Signal and New York Mercury to wrest the names of those individuals mentioned in the newsprints’ columns who claimed to have observed Mary.

  As a result, an umbrella maker from Rose Street was questioned who said he had seen a girl who may have been Mary shortly after ten that Sunday morning in Theatre Alley, a short lane off Ann Street, leading to the stage door of the Park Theatre. There, he said, the girl ran into the arms of a waiting gentleman, greeting him as one might a lover, and then repairing with him up the alley in a northerly direction to an ultimate destination, the witness swore, he knew not where, nor, when pressed, could hope to know.

  An accounts clerk at the New York Bank, out for an early Sunday morning promenade, was also ferreted out and detained. He said he saw Mary, or a girl meeting Mary’s description, on Barclay Street. She was heading in the direction, he remembered, of the Hoboken ferry, whose station was at the extreme west end of that street.

  Additionally, a contingent from the Day Watch dispatched to canvass the ferry quay found a young man who concurred with earlier testimony, saying he, too, saw Mary, or, again, a girl who looked like Mary, boarding the ferry with a “dark-complexioned man.” Other passengers vouched similarly, attesting they remembered the fellow. Two among them, daily riders, agreed he may have been a military man, a naval or army officer.

  On Old Hays’ orders a force was sent across the river to Hoboken, tramping the bank south to Jersey City and north to Weehawken.

  A German woman, Mrs. Frederika Kallenbarack Loss, proprietress of Nick Moore’s House, an inn near to where the body had been found, reported the presence that Sunday of a group of some fifteen ruffians who had rowed over from the city in two small boats, and had proceeded to cause havoc all afternoon long. Mrs. Loss also revealed that same afternoon a young woman of Mary’s description had patronized her establishment.

  Word was immediately sent to Hays of Mrs. Loss’s recollection. Balboa drove the high constable to the ferry wharf, and he was on the next boat over, standing the journey at the rail, gazing north at the wide scope and magnificence of the Hudson. Upon landing at Hoboken, Hays was immediately taken by stage north to the Nick Moore House.

  Hays found Mrs. Loss to be an immigrant woman, although not a recent immigrant, he thought, from the traces of her accent. She was decidedly big-boned and strong-featured, her hair a yellow color, streaked by almost imperceptible strands of gray and pulled back in a loose bun. Her eyes were unsettling and icily blue.

  Mrs. Loss recounted to Hays (smiling almost coquettishly) the fateful day of what was presumed to be Mary’s murder:

  A girl had come into the inn on the arm of a gentleman. Once more agreeing with other witnesses, the man was again described as dark-complexioned.

  “Could he have been a navy man?” Hays asked.

  She was not sure. She did not think so.

  “An army man?”

  Again, she was not sure. “He might very well have had a military bearing,” she conceded, “but he remains unfortunately dim in my mind.”

  But what Mrs. Loss did recall was that “the child” seemed “a very nice girl” with fine manners and airs. She ordered a glass of lemonade and bowed smartly upon taking her leave.

  Mrs. Loss remembered her particularly because she had on a dress similar to one that had belonged to Mrs. Loss’s sister-in-law, recently deceased. Looking back, Mrs. Loss now presumed this girl to have been Mary Rogers.

  There was more.

  Later that night, Mrs. Loss told Hays, she recalled having heard screams. At first she thought it to be her middle son, Ossian, whom she had sent to drive a bull to a neighboring farm. Fearing he had been gored, she took to the road, following the track all the way to the neighbor’s barn. There she found her boy none the worse for wear, and thinking nothing more about the screams, so many people having come across the river and enjoyed themselves that day due to the heat wave, she took him firmly by the arm and returned to the roadhouse.

  During Hays’ interview with Mrs. Loss, Adam Wall, the local stagecoach driver who had picked Hays up at the wharf and brought him to the inn, came into the roadhouse for some warranted refreshment, the day being as hot as it was, ninety-three degrees.

  Overhearing the conversation, Mr. Wall intruded, eagerly offering that he had viewed the corpse of the dead girl the Wednesday of her discovery on the riverbank. He told Hays he had recognized her straightaway as a young woman he had picked up at the Bull’s Head Ferry and brought to Mrs. Loss’s roadhouse only a few days before, on Sunday. He remembered upon dropping her off that there had indeed been packs of hoodlums roaming the woods and enclaves that afternoon particularly. He especially remembered one gang who had invaded the little mud shanty next to Mrs. Loss’s, seized all the cakes, and ate them, refusing to pay anything and threatening anyone who dared interfere.

  According to Mr. Wall, the gang remained about the shoreline until dark, when they departed in a hurry by rowboat, but not before dragging the daughter of a family, over for a day’s outing, out of their boat and having their way with her despite the protestations of her father.

  Mr. Wall told Hays he had not personally witnessed the abduction of the daughter, but this is what he had heard, although from whom he could not remember. Hays, noting the slow manner in which Mr. Wall’s eyes rose to meet Mrs. Loss’s eyes, immediately knew the source of this tidbit of gossip to be her.

  9

  In a Clearing

  A week later, in the tepid middle days of September, word reached Hays that Mrs. Loss had come forward to Bennett at the Herald with a remarkable revelation.

  Her two younger sons, she recounted, Oscar and Ossian, aged nine and twelve respectively (Charlie was the eldest at fifteen), had been playing in the woods near her home, north of the old Weehawken ferry dock. In a clearing they had come across a variety of discarded clothes, gloves, handkerchief, and parasol, the lot of it inhabited by crawling bugs of the type that fester in wet discarded articles.

  These found articles themselves were much mildewed and moldy, trampled down, she said, in a thicket near a cove in the woods. The parasol and handkerchief had the initials MCR embroidered on them, leaving no doubt to whom they belonged.

  Hays traveled immediately to Mrs. Loss. The clothing, the parasol, the gloves, alleging to be Mary Rogers’, were all laid out in the downstairs bar at Nick Moore’s House.

  “Why, my good woman, were these articles not left in place?” Hays demanded upon viewing them exhibited in this manner.

  Mrs. Loss shrank back from his anger, and said in her defense she was fearful someone not connected to the case would find them and remove them.

  “Not likely, considering they have remained undisturbed and unnoticed for such a period, and only now have been found,” Hays fumed, gauging the woman and her intent. Was it stupidity or slyness? “Madam, the placement of the articles in the clearing might have given me clues to how the murder was committed,” he explained slowly.

  Mrs. Loss apologized profusely. “I did not realize the severity of my action, and the actions of my boys. I can only hope and pray our thoughtlessness will not impede your investigation further, High Constable. If
it would be any help at all, I would not mind in the least to help you reconstruct their placement,” she offered.

  The purported scene of the crime proved to be a curious, if convenient, alcove in the woods. The area was furnished with three large rocks, one of which formed a sort of seat, while a second formed a makeshift backrest, and the third a footrest or ottoman. The clearing was heavily surrounded by dense brush.

  As Mrs. Loss said, every last article had been collected and removed by her and her boys. Not a shred left. Hays had only Mrs. Loss’s word for where they had been found and under what circumstances (“Here was discovered a strip of torn dress, thrice impaled on a single thorn”). The area was much trampled upon, attesting to what might have been sign of a colossal life-and-death struggle. There were indications leading from the clearing to the river that something of weight had been dragged.

  The following day, September 17, 1841, a steel-point etching appeared on the front page of the New York Herald depicting the Nick Moore House, its clapboard siding, the wooden stairs and rail going up, the single dormer in the center of the shingled roof.

  Beneath, in large bold type, was printed the legend:

  THE LAST PLACE ON EARTH

  WHERE MARY ROGERS WAS SEEN ALIVE

  Opposite, also on the front page, a poem inscribed “To Mary,” credited to the city’s laureate poet and signed “Fitz-Greene Halleck,” took residence in the lefthand column.

  Mary had been noticed at some public places

  (The Battery and Broadway)

  For hers was one of those glorious faces,

  That when you gaze upon them, never fail,

  To bid you look again; There was a beam,

  A lustre in her eye, that oft would seem

  A little like effrontery; and yet

  The lady meant no harm; her only aim

  Was to be admired by all she met,

  And the free homage of the heart to claim;

  And if she showed too plainly this intention,

  Others have done the same—’twas not of her

  invention.

  But where is Mary? She has long been thrown

  Where cheeks and rose wither—in the shade.

  And although, as I once before have said,

  I love a pretty face to adoration,

  Yet, still, I must preserve my reputation.

  10

  What Colt Did

  I nside the same day’s edition of the Herald featuring the Nick Moore House etching and the Fitz-Greene Halleck ode of tribute to Mary Rogers, the family of a Transport Street printer, Samuel Adams, posted a desperate notice:

  MISSING FROM HIS PREMISES

  Beloved husband, father …

  A cash reward was offered for any information leading to the return of this vanished man.

  A week passed with no word on the whereabouts of the gentleman in question, whereupon Old Hays received a card at his office in the Tombs that a body had been found sepulchred in a crate in the hold of a packet steamer lying at the foot of Maiden Lane.

  With McArdel in tow, Hays proceeded to the waterfront. There indeed, aboard ship, from below, there came the most fearful smell.

  “We ’ave been delayed a week on our way to New Orleans,” the captain told the high constable. “When this morning come this ’orrible stench from the ’old, I tole me mate, break cargo, and that is what ’e done.”

  With his handkerchief clasped over his nose, Hays descended to view the remains of he who would later be identified as the printer Adams, without clothes, wrapped in canvas and stuffed, knee to chin, into a wooden box.

  “Do you know how the crate got here?” Hays asked.

  Both captain and mate said they did not. “Delivered by a cartman, it was, but who might ’ave employed ’im or who that feller was, I du’know.”

  That evening Hays had McArdel advertise in several of the penny papers for any individual who might have brought a box to the ship.

  The next day, the sought-after cartman, his interest drawn to the advertisement and solidified by the money offered as a reward by the family, came forward. He told of carrying a wooden crate, leaking a dark liquid that may have been blood, from the corner of Chambers Street and Broadway to the east side docks at Maiden Lane.

  Hays asked could he recognize that person who had employed him.

  “He wasn’t just your everyday kind of fellow,” he said. “No, not him. He was a high bloke, he was, with plenty of lucre.”

  “How much did he pay you?” asked Hays.

  “Gave me a five-dollar gold piece, he did.”

  “Did that not alert you, sir?”

  “Alert me to what?”

  A granite building stood at the corner of Chambers and Broadway where the cartman indicated he had made his pickup. Hays walked the length of sidewalk, and by the public pump discovered a discoloration of the cobbles that may have been bloodstains.

  He sent McArdel into a number of nearby buildings until he returned with a professional bookkeeper by the name of Wheeler. Mr. Wheeler told the high constable a week before he had been sitting in his office with a young lad who was a pupil of his. It was between three and four o’clock, he said, when a very agitated gentleman rushed in from the street and up the stairs. Soon, the bookkeeper said, he heard the sounds of an argument, the cry “You lie!” followed by the sounds of a struggle, what might have been swordplay.

  “Swordplay?”

  “That is what it sounded like, sir. I remember looking up from my work and saying to my pupil, ‘Did you hear that? What was it?’”

  The bookkeeper continued, “My room is next to another engaged in a similar field. He keeps accounts, although he instructs in the art of ornamental penmanship as well.”

  “What might this gentleman’s name be?” asked Hays.

  “John Colt. After hearing such noise and such fright, everything suddenly had gone silent. Stealthily I crept to Mr. Colt’s door, from where I was sure the commotion emanated, and peered through the keyhole, displacing the cover, which was down, with the handle of my pen.”

  “What did you see?”

  “A man I assumed to be Mr. Colt with his back to the door, stooping over something and quietly raising it. There was no noise. All was still and quiet as the charnel house.”

  Old Hays had heard enough.

  “Do you know if Mr. Colt is in his office at this moment?”

  “I cannot say. I think he is.”

  The man who answered Hays’ knock was tall and lean, handsome of his style, well haberdashed, not a mollycoddle exactly, but a fussbudget, what surely might have been taken by a cartman, or anyone of a certain predisposition, as a high bloke.

  “Mr. Colt?” Hays inquired.

  “Mr. High Constable,” the man answered.

  It would not be quite accurate to say John Colt looked cool to Hays, but he did not appear exactly flummoxed either.

  “You recognize me, sir?”

  “I imagine there are few in this city, High Constable, who would not.”

  “Just so,” Hays said. “Sir, I am here under the most regrettable of circumstances. Are you of the acquaintance of a printer by the name of Samuel Adams?”

  Colt’s expression barely changed, but, as perceived by Hays, change it did. “I am not,” the suspect said.

  “You are certain? A gentleman by the name of Samuel Adams?”

  “I am certain, sir. I do not know this individual.”

  “I see. And you are not the one to have sent a crate packed with the body of a man, this man, this gentleman whom you do not know, Mr. Samuel Adams, to New Orleans?”

  Colt stepped back, smiling in what Hays saw as a disturbing, most unsettling manner.

  Still, he denied all.

  Hays tipped his bowler to him, bid him good afternoon, and returned to the street. He ordered McArdel to post a man outside the building with instructions to follow Colt wherever he might go.

  McArdel himself was to proceed immediately to Adams’ ho
me and place of business to see if there might be any record, or anyone with knowledge, perhaps his wife, of a previous connection between these two gentlemen, Mr. Adams and Mr. Colt.

  HIGH CONSTABLE HAYS was a well-known figure. Many criminals were stopped in their tracks when they heard uttered the warning, “Beware, Old Hays is after you.” Before dawn the following morning, the high constable, with Sergeant McArdel accompanying him in accustomed role of strong arm, came for Mr. John C. Colt at his home on Washington Square. After awakening the suspect, Hays requested that he accompany him to the Dead House, where, unbeknownst to him, the body of Samuel Adams was lying under a sheet.

  The atmosphere in the Dead House justifiably brought a chill to Colt. In the cold and cavernous room, Hays reposed questions to him, and again the suspect assiduously denied the murder of the printer Adams, denied even knowing him.

  Bearing him no heed, Old Hays persisted with his questioning. He was accustomed to initiating his interrogation with a warning: “Good citizens will tell the truth.”

  He would intone this statement just so, cracking his staff in accompaniment on the hard floor for additional effect.

  Adams’ body remained covered, and the room in the Dead House was dark and sinister.

  Hays suddenly swept the sheet off the corpse. “Look upon this body!” he ordered Colt. At the same time, he carefully shone the beam of his lantern on the remains. “Behold the cold and clammy body of your victim, Mr. Colt! Have you ever seen this man before?”

  Colt jerked back, terrified, and cried out in horror, but Hays, unrelenting, shoved him forward and pressed his head down until the suspect was forced to stare into the clouded eyes of the dead man.

  “Murderer!” cried Hays. “Confess! Now, have you ever seen this man before?”

  Colt broke into sobs. “Yes, Mr. Hays, as God is my witness, he is Samuel Adams and I have murdered him.”

  A WARRANT was subsequently sworn and acted upon in the name of John C. Colt, and a confession to the following effect written by the alleged perpetrator.