A Madness So Discreet

by Mindy McGinnis

  “Not voodoo, simply logic,” Thornhollow said. “And if you’re truly interested I have no objection to broadening your horizons.”

  “And if I’m not, the good laugh might at least keep me warm,” George said.

  “You can tell me yourself how amusing it is once I’m finished,” Thornhollow said, rising to pace around the victim. “Starting with the body facedown as it was found—we obviously have a male, rather large in stature, who was killed only hours previously. The body is cool and the blood is frozen, but I can tell you by the spray pattern and pooled blood that the carotid artery has been severed. Also, by the tracks all around the body—and I’m noting to myself here your inability to leave the crime scene unaltered—none seem to match the size of the victim’s shoe so we can assume that he was killed while the snow was still falling in enough earnest to fill his steps. Unfortunately, it also filled those of his killer.”

  Thornhollow bent to the body again, bare fingers touching the man’s overcoat. “However, the body was still warm enough to melt most of the snow that fell on it. There’s moisture on him here, but no accumulated snow, which means he lay here not terribly long before the snow stopped.”

  “Heat and snow and moisture,” George muttered. “You sound like the weather column in the papers.”

  “Perhaps I do, but it’s all toward establishing a time of death, which I doubt you see mentioned in the forecasts,” Thornhollow said. “I’ll add that even though he fell forward his hat remains on. Before you roll him over I’ll postulate that we’ll see a single neck wound delivered from the front, deep enough to kill with one stroke, and no defensive marks on the hands.”

  “How do you get all that from his hat still being on?” Davey asked.

  “Physics,” Thornhollow said, approaching Davey. “Pretend I were to stab you, right now, quite unexpectedly, in the throat. What would you do?”

  “I imagine I’d lie down and die,” Davey said. “Though I’d thank you for not doing it.”

  “Yes, you would, but there are steps to get you there. First, your hands would instinctively go to your wound in a futile attempt to stop the blood from flowing instead of warding off your attacker. Instantly weak from blood loss, you’d sink to your knees, perhaps one at a time, slowly getting yourself to the point where you in fact, lie down and die.”

  “With my hat still on,” Davey added.

  “Yes, with your hat still on because you were taken by surprise. You didn’t grapple with your killer or have it knocked from your head in an attack from behind.”

  “So . . . ,” Davey said, looking to the doctor for approval as he spoke each word. “He was walking with someone, a person he had no reason to think meant him harm.”

  “It’s a possibility,” Thornhollow agreed.

  “A possibility,” George echoed, hawking spit into the snow. “You don’t sound too confident.”

  “Not the only option, but definitely a contender,” Thornhollow went on, ignoring the heckling. “Whoever killed this man did not jump him from the shadows. The killer stood face-to-face with him and drove a knife into his throat without him having any idea it was about to happen. So yes, I’d say a companion or an agreed-upon meeting are both excellent deductions.”

  Davey stood a little straighter, ignoring the dark look from George as he rolled the body over. “All right, we’ll see, then. A single knife wound, coming up.”

  George’s sarcasm died in his throat when the corpse was turned, a bloody gash at the base of the throat all that marred the bone-white skin.

  “By God, that’s Beaton,” Davey said. “The man what’s got a shop up on Hudson. Oh, my ma won’t be too happy about this. She says his powders is all that helps her eczema.”

  “It’s who now?” George asked, raising his lantern to the victim’s face.

  Grace locked eyes with Thornhollow, her blank gaze betraying nothing while his face solidified into his own mask of impartiality, although his eyes blazed as bright as George’s lantern.

  “It’s Beaton,” Davey said again. “You know the fellow. He makes up the medicines for the whores—” He stopped, face flushed. “I mean for the ladies that serve up at the tavern when they get . . . when they get a cold.”

  “Don’t spare your language for Grace’s sake,” Thornhollow said. “She’s heard and seen worse things than you, I imagine.”

  “Done them too, from what you’ve said,” George added.

  “Yes,” Thornhollow agreed. “Yes, she has.”

  Grace bit the inside of her cheek until blood flooded her mouth. Beaton’s face in the moonlight had not affected her, the dark spray against the untouched snow had not given her pause, and the hot, coppery scent of flowing blood had not brought her to gag. But one look from Thornhollow in the arc of the lamplight had clenched her stomach, her convictions weakening with the weight of his heavy glance that sank straight into her soul.

  “So this man Beaton, he mixed medicines for prostitutes?” Thornhollow went on.

  “He did, was the only man that would service them. Did it free of charge as well,” George added. “Said he wouldn’t take money from them that had so little to spare, though perhaps he took payment otherwise.”

  “Somehow I doubt that,” Thornhollow said to himself.

  “This’ll be a blow to his mother,” Davey said. “She lost her other son just a few months ago at Wounded Knee.”

  Grace felt her mouth twist as Thornhollow’s brow came together in confusion. “He had a brother?”

  “Yeah, few years older if I remember right,” George said. “He joined up soon as he could, no doubt to get away from their mother. I wouldn’t shed too many tears over Beaton, Davey boy, except over his medicines. He’s happier wherever he’s gone. Those were the two most browbeaten men I ever seen.”

  “He may be happier dead, but who would kill him?” Davey asked.

  Grace watched Thornhollow, the twitch of his jaw muscles the only indication of his inner struggle. “His medicines may have been the end of him,” he finally said. “Whoever drove this blade knew how to cut and did so with no hesitation whatsoever. There’s a complete lack of human compassion at work here.”

  Grace stood slack, eyes wide and uncomprehending, though a yawning chasm had opened inside her stomach.

  “It’s a professional job, then?” George asked. “You think he got mixed up in something over his head?”

  “Possibly. The taxes on opium imports are high—I can tell you as a doctor that uses them on the most violent of patients. When it’s wanted for recreational purposes the cost can go sky-high unless you can find someone homegrown with the capabilities to maximize the effect of the drug. And of course you’d have to pay them well for their services and discretion.”

  “So Beaton got greedy, you think?” George asked.

  Thornhollow shrugged. “Or said too much to the wrong person. We’ll probably never know.”

  “I can at least check at the depot, see if there was anyone behaving oddly on the last train out,” Davey suggested.

  “You can if it’ll make you feel thorough,” Thornhollow said. “Though someone with the training to kill with that kind of precision can undoubtedly stand right next to you without giving away a thing, they’re that adept at mimicking true feelings. Gentlemen, I am freezing.” He turned to leave, about to take Grace by the elbow when he found that Davey’s hand was already there. The policeman handed her up into the carriage and Grace fought to keep her face calm as Ned brought the horses to a trot, and they left the gaslit lamps of the park behind them.

  “Please tell me you already burned your clothes.” Thornhollow’s voice came from the darkness, devoid of all inflection.

  “I did.”

  “And the ether rag?”

  “Thrown in the river.”

  Silence stretched between them and Grace sat stiffly, ready to combat any argument that he would use against her actions.

  “Grace, do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

&
nbsp; “I’ve killed a man,” she said. “One that deserved to die.”

  “And what of yourself, Grace? What part of you had to die in order to take this drastic step?”

  She expected to feel the heat of her rage at his words, but there was nothing but the darkness that yawned inside her. “I don’t want to speak about this anymore,” Grace said, her voice shaky.

  Thornhollow slammed his foot onto the carriage floor. “Whether you will or not does not dictate the course of the conversation. I’m speaking to you now as your doctor, and I do not like what I’ve seen before me these past few months. It was human nature to rant and explode at Nell’s death, but this—this is something entirely new. You’ve cut off your emotions to the point where you could look a fellow human being in the eye and drive a knife into his throat.”

  “A fate he well deserved,” Grace said.

  “And was not yours to deliver!” Thornhollow shot back. “Can you not see it? Only your sister’s name can evoke any emotion from you, that or a new break in our case—one that you’ve very thoroughly closed. The ends neatly tied up with butcher’s string.”

  “I’m the butcher?” Grace asked. “With so many bodies in his wake?”

  “Bodies that he covered,” Thornhollow reminded her. “Bodies that he positioned so that he may believe them alive and absolve himself of guilt, not with their throats open to the world as if to proclaim no guilt could be had from the action!”

  “None can,” she asserted, though he had planted a seed of doubt that had found traction somewhere inside her hollowness. She searched for words to appease Thornhollow without giving ground. “I want to say that in many ways he seemed so very normal.”

  “As do you, Grace,” Thornhollow said. “As do you.”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  “Doctor,” Grace said quietly as she watched him erasing the blackboard. “I need to speak with you about my sister.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I know.”

  Grace had kept to herself in the week since Beaton’s death, giving Thornhollow a wide berth and processing her own actions. There had been a veil over her mind when she killed, her blade striking true, the sharp edge of the asylum kitchen’s knife slicing through Beaton’s neck easily. The spray of blood had not alarmed her, having seen so many crime scenes. His face as he went down, the confusion in his eyes, the ether-soaked rag in his pocket—none of these things had slipped into her nightmares.

  The killing itself was easy, her removal from it in the moment, complete. But Thornhollow’s words had torn the veil away, and Davey’s words of Beaton’s kindness haunted her. Little memorials began to appear in the newspaper from private citizens who posted in their mourning. Beaton had treated prostitutes when no one else would. He had mixed a substitute powder for an infant who would have died after refusing her mother’s milk. He delivered medicines to elderly patients in their homes so they need not wander out in the weather. Except for one glaring exception he had been a lovely man.

  Thornhollow had left her to mull her actions in private, granting her wish to not speak of it again, which she now realized was in fact a harsh punishment. It was not guilt precisely that plagued her but a nagging realization that while her actions had saved lives, it was clear that some of Beaton’s had too. And she’d removed him from the world with a flick of her wrist. Their chalkboard had always consisted of black and white, but the reality was gray, and she struggled with the pain of learning it.

  Breaking Thornhollow’s silence was not easily done, but time was passing. Each day brought her father closer to home and to Alice, with a present he would demand something infernal for in return.

  “I’ll be blunt with you, Grace,” Thornhollow said, back still to her. “I’ve not been able to come up with a plausible way to remove Alice from the household. Even if anonymous letters were written to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, your father is powerful enough to see it brushed under the rug. There are possibilities for delaying his return further, but I can see nothing that will separate the two of them for good.”

  “I can,” Grace said.

  He turned to her, his features drawn. “I won’t let you kill him.”

  “I won’t have to,” she said, willing some calmness into her face as she watched Thornhollow carefully. “We have dead women with no one convicted of the crimes, the true killer no longer among us. The blame can be shifted.”

  Thornhollow mulled this, his mind working. “True, but your father was only in the area when one of the crimes was committed.”

  “Yes, I know,” Grace said, moving to the chalkboard to create a new picture. “Jenny Cantor’s time of death was never fully established due to the temperatures. She could easily have been killed when he was here.”

  The doctor pulled the chalk from her hand to make his own notations. “We can hardly pin him with one murder because he was here and ignore the connection to the others. He was nowhere near when they were committed.”

  “Why can’t we?” Grace said. “Mellie Jacobs wasn’t murdered, according to the police. You never shared your suspicions about Jenny and Anka Baran being done by the same hand.”

  “No I didn’t, because I knew no one would listen to me,” Thornhollow admitted, tossing the chalk from hand to hand in thought. “Or the two from Pomeroy, either. Beaton had one hell of a method, I’ll give him that. Even a good coroner might come to the conclusion of natural causes once the ether evaporated.”

  “And now we put it to our own use,” Grace said, snatching the chalk as it sailed from one of his hands to the other. “Accuse my father of Jenny Cantor’s death. If he’s convicted, he’ll hang.”

  “Grace, do you hear yourself?”

  “I do, Dr. Thornhollow, and I don’t see shame in it.” She groped for words, unwilling to let her fought-for voice fail her now. “Jenny Cantor is dead, Mr. Beaton with her, and no one but the two of us knowing the reasons for it. Why not extend the hand of justice a little further? You know my father is a monster.”

  Thornhollow grimaced and walked away from her. “He is, undoubtedly. But even if I were to agree to this plan, we have no grounds whatsoever that would earn a conviction from a jury. Your father was in the same general area as the victim. That’s all. He has no history of violence or sexual proclivities that are on record. You may as well accuse his coach driver of being guilty of the murder and have just as much evidence.”

  “Except the testimony of an expert witness, Dr. Melancthon Thornhollow, who would state that Nathaniel Mae is a deviant fully capable of this act.”

  Thornhollow went pale and he sat down abruptly. “You’d have me take the name of my science in vain, on my word, in a courtroom? I cannot do that, Grace, not even for you.”

  Grace had expected the argument. “I know better than to ask. Rather I’d ask you to testify in the name of phrenology, a science you have no faith in whatsoever.”

  “To condemn a man for a crime he didn’t commit.”

  “No, Doctor—I’m asking you to condemn him for the crimes you know he did.” Grace’s voice grew thick as she fought back the emotions that longed to well up inside her, bringing with them all of the memories she’d relegated to the dark. She cried out, doubling over as she fought to keep them away and sliding to the floor in her misery. “It’s not only for me, though I’m the one you see in front of you. There have been many. So many, Doctor. I see their faces and it can’t be undone, only rectified.”

  His face went into his hands, and for long moments the only sound was the clock as he pored over her arguments internally. Grace waited, her spine crackling with nerves as he deliberated.

  “I can’t do it, Grace,” he said, hands still covering his face, his words sending her heart plummeting. “The risks involved are so great. Your father would be tried here, where the crime occurred, bringing him near you again—something I would avoid at all costs. Even with my testimony there is very little to condemn him and your father would have the best lawyer money could buy. We
would lose, Grace. He’d see my career ruined, and God knows what would happen to you if that were the case.”

  “Your career,” she said, her tone cold though her voice quaked with emotion. “Science,” she said, her volume rising. “These things mean nothing to me held in balance with my sister’s fate.”

  “Did you not hear me mention your own?” Thornhollow yelled back.

  “Also meaningless!”

  “Christ, Grace. You’re not yourself. You haven’t been since—”

  His office doors banged open and Thornhollow jumped to his feet, arms spread in front of Grace. Lizzie swooped in, color high and eyes burning.

  “No, she’s not been herself, Doctor. Not since Nell died and she killed a man.”

  “Elizabeth!” he sputtered. “You . . . you . . .”

  “I what? I know things I shouldn’t? Of course I do. String tells me. You might as well let Grace come out from behind you. She doesn’t need your protection—she needs you to do as she says.”

  Grace pushed Thornhollow’s arms away to look at Lizzie.

  “Out with it, Grace,” Lizzie said. “I know you’ve got a voice, same as the rest of us. String says so, and tells me more than you ever would even if you used it.”

  “Elizabeth,” Thornhollow said quietly. “String did not tell you these things. You’ve learned them on your own by watching Grace and—might I add—eavesdropping outside my office for who knows how long.” He closed the doors, giving Lizzie a dark look as he did. He tried to usher her to a chair but she shook him off.

  “Enough with manners. I’ve had manners my whole life, and they’ve done nothing for me. I know things, things that most everyone would rather not have said aloud in public, and I keep my mouth shut. I do it to keep the peace and let everyone have their secrets. But no longer!”

  She stamped her little foot, the same ferocity that would flash itself occasionally at Nell now out in full force. “I know what he did to you, Grace. Thornhollow can have his ideas of how I learned it, but I know it all the same. I’d rather you told me yourself, Grace. Time and time again I gave you chances to speak, to let me hear your voice and share your woes with me the way I did mine with you. But you—” She turned on Thornhollow so quickly he stepped away from her. “You’ve got her shut up tight like a drum for fear of bringing a storm down on your head. Don’t you ever accuse her of not thinking of how her actions affect your career, sir. She’s more loyal than you’ll ever know, her very tongue stoppered against her only friend left living, her troubles hers and hers alone just to keep your deception safe.”