by Paul Boor
“The bitters will do.”
Tackleberry hesitated. “Something more potent can be mixed, if desired.”
Nicolas hefted the package of bitters. Keep your wits about you, he thought. Adam’s killer’s out there.
“That’s all I’ll be needing,” he said. “Thank you, good sir.”
Nicolas climbed the stairs and settled in the west parlour of the flat. Schuyler laid out one of his Scottish tweed suits, a fresh shirt, drawers, socks, and sundries for his father on the sideboard. He showed Nicolas the divan that was to serve as his bed, and Nicolas stretched out. The setting sun threw a purplish glow on the flowery wallpaper that covered the walls of the flat. Faint medicinal odors drifted up from below.
“I’ll be joining friends for supper this evening,” Schuyler told Nicolas. “Care to make their acquaintance?”
Nicolas thought for a moment, then said, “I think not, Son. I must be off to the college again to settle finances with the professor and perhaps discover more about this voodoo man.”
“There’s a Turkish bath in the next block. You’d best avail yourself of it.”
“That can wait.” Nicolas hesitated again. “I don’t suppose you’d accompany me to the college before your supper engagement?”
Now it was Schuyler who paused; his eyes met his father’s. “Tell me, Father—will she be there? The one I saw you with at Saratoga?”
“It . . . it doesn’t matter, I haven’t had a word from her since . . . since before your mother left us.”
“Well, a medical college isn’t exactly my cup of tea. Do join us afterward, though. We’ll be at a Spanish spot in Sailortown called El Malhado. It’s a simple tavern, but there’s good eats, very rich, and a piano that’s usually in tune.”
74
Francis and Nicolas
In the first-floor vestibule of the medical college, Francis Keiller, professor of morbid anatomy and chancellor, was surrounded by a cluster of students. He was holding forth with an impromptu lecture on an obscure point of anatomy, but when he spied Nicolas entering the college, the good professor dismissed his students and greeted the ice merchant warmly.
“Shall we make our way to my office?” he said. “I bet you’ll join me for a wee touch o’ whiskey now that our business is finished, eh?”
Nicolas noted how slowly Keiller took the stairs, each step an obvious agony, though the old man’s spirits seemed high, indeed ebullient after filling his vats.
“I’ve missed your company, Van Horne.”
“But how’s your health, man? You’re looking poorly.”
“Ah, it’s my spine that’s a bother lately,” Keiller replied. “As is usually the case, I’m afraid it reflects something more serious. The tuberculosis has set up shop in plenty of places, including my bones.” He chuckled. “One can know too much in this business, ye see.”
In his office, Keiller searched for glasses and poured two whiskeys.
“I take it you were visited by a certain cotton jammer,” Nicolas said.
“The king of the jammers, I’d say. Or maybe their prince. A fascinating fellow. You realize he’s related to Hutch Sealy, don’t you?”
Nicolas gave a nod. “I had qualms sending him your way, but there was no recourse.”
“Turns out he’s a sound chap, voodoo and all. We had a fine visit. Damned if he didn’t brave the formaldehyde to inspect every cadaver in our vats and the few hanging in our storage vault. He found none from the potter’s field among them, and no colored folks.”
“As I told him, then.”
“One has to respect a man of such conviction, even if it goes against our purpose at the college. In a way, he’s the opposite of his brother, Trey, and the other cotton traders.”
“How so?”
“Ah, the port’s grown since you were last here, Nicolas. Once we had benefactors . . . hell, old man Sealy was our biggest benefactor, but no more. Now these cotton traders are all after us. With these economic panics of the past year, our real estate is more coveted than ever. The traders rile the whole town against us, but I suppose that’s business for you.”
Nicolas stared at the pale surface of his whiskey. “Yes, business and the almighty dollar,” he said. “Not that long ago, I thought of the bodies I collect as a commodity, you know. It was easy profit.”
“And now?”
Nicolas looked up. His eyes glistened. “You’re doing noble work here, Professor, and I’m here to support you.”
“I count us lucky for that.”
“You see, I’ve come to a different period in my life.”
“How so?”
“I’ve had losses—personal blows, financial losses. But when one’s life is threatened, life takes on a different value.”
Concern crossed Keiller’s face. He pushed his spectacles up on his nose. “Yes, Adam’s murder.”
“You see, Professor, as I mentioned earlier, I discovered this dastardly business afoot in the North. My activities to expose it have put me in a degree of danger, I fear. It has to do with a bustling commerce in child labor—”
“Child labor, you say? The voodoo fellow mentioned something about that.”
“The Voodoo Doctor knew of it?”
“Why, yes. Something about crews of young boys taking the cotton jammers’ jobs.”
“I must speak with our voodoo friend again.”
“Yes, you must. Seems there are worse criminals than him on this island.” With a grunt, Keiller pushed himself out of his desk chair. “I’ve nearly forgotten,” he said, limping toward the safe that squatted under the nearby table. “Let’s settle up, shall we?”
“We’re square on that, Francis.”
Keiller stopped and leaned wearily on the table. “What’s that?”
“I’m doing it at no cost.”
“No cost? Two dozen cadavers, and no cost?”
“It’s the least I can do for your college.”
“Van Horne, you are truly a savior.”
“‘Benefactor,’ I believe you called it, Professor. Your college needs a benefactor to replace those who’ve abandoned you.”
“Now there’s a turn of events we must celebrate,” Keiller said, reaching for the bottle.
75
In the Laboratory
At their third round of drinks Nicolas held up a hand to call it quits. “Don’t bother to get up,” he said, seeing the grimace on Keiller’s face. “I’ll show myself out.”
“Before you leave, you must see our latest progress on yellow fever. I insist.”
Keiller shuffled into the lab, sat at his microscope, and fired its brilliant limelight lamp. He updated Nicolas on their quest for a cure, explaining that the anti-toxoid they’d produced in horses completely prevented yellow fever in guinea pigs, their preferred experimental animal.
The scientists had a cure—for guinea pigs.
“But will it work in humans?” Nicolas asked.
“Now that’s the question, and we’re nearly at the stage of testing it. I’d be the guinea pig myself, if only I could,” the professor said. “I’d inject myself with our anti-toxoid in the blink of an eye. Like Jennings did with his vaccine. Or like Koch.”
“Why not do it?” Nicolas suppressed a laugh. “I’ve tested a few concoctions in my time,” he said, thinking back on his year of reckless self-experimentation with the apothecary’s myriad of mind-enhancing alchemy.
“You misunderstand, Van Horne,” Keiller insisted. “Most of us at the medical college have lived too long in these tropics and, like it or not, we’re constantly exposed by caring for our feverish patients, too. Oh, occasionally a new student volunteers to be a test subject. Valiant of them. Commendable, really, but we couldn’t risk that.”
Keiller motioned toward the eyepiece of his microscope. “Come. Look.” Nicolas squinted into the instrument, adjusting his eye to the foreign landscape. “There’s the culprits, Van Horne. See how thick they are! They’re gaining. Each summer, each epidemic, they b
ecome more pernicious. And I fear the worst is yet to come.”
As Nicolas peered into Keiller’s high-powered optics, he was distracted by a familiar scent in the air. Did he detect a hint of apple blossom? Could Renée be near? More likely, he thought, it was exhaustion playing tricks, or simply some pleasant-smelling lab chemical. Renée was nowhere in sight, though Nicolas reflexively conjured her striking silhouette at the window—in his mind’s eye.
“Yes, I see them.” Nicolas felt his pulse quicken at the strange sight under the microscope . . . or was it that apple blossom scent that had him going? “The damned thing’s packed with orange dots.”
Fatigue and excitement had Nicolas eager for that Turkish bath and some supper. His stomach rumbled. He bid the professor good night and thumped away in his borrowed seaman’s shoes.
“An assassin is waiting for me out there,” he muttered to himself as he took the stone stairs to the street. Yet somehow, Nicolas felt excited to be back. He set off to Schuyler’s flat with an unexpected lightness in his step. There’s much to accomplish before I leave Galveston, he thought as the cool island night washed over him. I only hope I leave it alive.
76
Invitations
The evening was still and quiet, no one on the streets. Only a single man a block behind. Not a big, burly man. Nicolas drew a deep breath of the moist gulf air, picked up the pace, turned toward the bay. He was being followed. The man turned. A half block behind now. Switch back toward the gulf. When he swung around to look, the man was gone.
He slowed his pace, glancing over his shoulder at each corner. In the year since his first visit, newly built rows of houses had stretched further east, filling this end of the island. Now the dirt streets were bricked well past the hospital and convent.
No one behind him now. Two blocks further and he came on Keiller’s house. Keiller’s lamps had been lit for the evening. The window glass gave off a warm, yellow glow, but the stained glass of the pelican above the entranceway—the beautiful work smashed at the professor’s party—had never been replaced. A plain board had been nailed over it. On closer look, a half dozen broken windows had gone without repair at the Keiller household.
Two men stood, smoking, on the corner of the next block. Nicolas crossed the street and set off. A slight detour one block to the left and he’d pass the little house of Madame La Porte. The men had tossed their smokes, crossed the street, and turned, too. Common workmen dressed in blue overalls, on the way to a job? Perhaps nothing more?
Best to get off the street. Renée would most likely be at the college. Nothing unusual in paying Madame La Porte a brief visit. He’d simply convey his regards and leave. He wasn’t properly dressed, but since he was recently arrived in town and all, that might be forgiven.
Nicolas unlatched the gate of the white picket fence. A gas lamp flickered in the front yard. Nicolas stepped to the door and was about to turn the doorbell when from inside came the delicate strains of a fiddle—such skill could only be Basil Prangoulis’s. Nicolas allowed a few bars of the soulful Gypsy tune to play out before he gave the doorbell a twist and the raucous ring stopped the fiddle in midnote, the door was thrown open, and the Hungarian music instructor of the Ursuline Women’s Academy—and local rabbi—stood in the doorway. Prangoulis, dressed in a well-worn bathrobe, looked casually threadbare and avuncular.
“Ach! The ice man. Good to see you, Van Horne.” Basil’s grip was firm as he welcomed Nicolas into the hall. “Your winter has been good to you, ja? Got plenty of ice to sell?” Prangoulis motioned toward the sitting room, where his blackened fiddle sat on the low table. “Come join me,” he said. “I am relaxing with music.”
“Thank you kindly, but I think not,” Nicolas said, taking two steps into the parlour. “I’ll stay only a moment. I trust Madame La Porte is well?”
“Ja, but she’s meditating right now, preparing for a session tomorrow night. She’s seating a special circle. I must tell you, she’s getting quite famous. Sure you won’t have a seat? You look worn thin.”
“An extremely strenuous voyage at sea.”
“Will you be long in Galveston?”
“A few days, no more.”
“But you must come visit with Madame La Porte before you depart. Perhaps tomorrow night for her session.” Prangoulis stepped closer and lowered his voice. “I can’t be part of her communications, of course. A modern rabbi can hardly condone the idea of a dead soul coming back from Sheol, eh? I think not. The abode of the dead . . . the underworld? Ha! I’m afraid the Torah strictly forbids that sort of thing. Still . . .” Prangoulis gave a nod toward the séance room across the hall. “I’ve seen firsthand Madame La Porte’s extraordinary talents and . . . well, I’ll tell you . . .”
While Prangoulis jabbered on, Nicolas stepped further into the parlour and glanced about as casually as he could manage. The armchairs and settee appeared as cozy as he remembered. Sheet music was spread next to Prangoulis’s fiddle on the low table. There was a new desk in the corner, japanned dark red and highly glossed, where writing materials were out and a stack of notes penned on fine vellum paper appeared under way.
Edging closer to the desk, Nicolas recognized Renée’s finely scripted handwriting; he’d seen so much of it. He couldn’t help but stare. One note card was easily read:
Madame Jacqueline La Porte
of Ball Lane
Requests the Honor of Your Presence
for the Joining in Holy Matrimony
of Her Daughter
Renée Keiller
to
Señor Fernando del Diablo y Hoya
at
The Cathedral of Saint Augustine
1700 Esplanade
June 15, 1890
Nicolas felt the blood drain from his face.
Prangoulis took his arm. “What is it, Van Horne?”
“I see a wedding is planned.”
“Planned, yes.” Prangoulis chuckled. “They set a date, then they set another. Or better to say Renée sets a date, and then changes it. She’s the one setting dates, ja?”
“I see. Do extend my sincere best wishes to her.”
“Very thoughtful of you.”
“I should like to speak with her sometime.”
Prangoulis hesitated, then lowered his voice to a confidential whisper. “You know, Mr. Van Horne, we understand about you two, in the past I mean.”
Nicolas’s mouth went dry.
“Ah, well, with Renée’s mother, you see”—he shrugged—“her sensitivity? Madame La Porte knew right away. Even Francis, the old bachelor uncle, huh?” Prangoulis chortled. “He understands his niece. Who could miss it, with all those letters?”
“That’s all behind us now,” Nicolas said, forcing a smile.
“Ja, water over the dam, eh?”
Nicolas edged toward the hallway. This talk had him flustered. “I must be off,” he said. “I’ll leave you to your fiddle.”
“Do stop again. Certainly you might come for tomorrow night’s sitting. I insist. I’ll speak with Madame La Porte. I believe there’s a place at the circle.”
Nicolas took the hand Prangoulis offered.
“I’ll tell Renée you stopped,” the rabbi said.
“Yes . . . yes. Please do.”
“Plan to arrive before midnight tomorrow—that’s when she’ll seat the circle.”
It had been a bad idea to stop at Madame La Porte’s. Too much had been stirred up. And the idea of talking to the dead, to those who’d passed beyond, was unsettling. So many deaths. First, Ruth. Thomas Chubb. Adam. Madame La Porte should let the dead lie.
As he passed Tackleberry’s apothecary, Nicolas stopped, stepped back, and stared at the shop window. That enticing medicinal scent wafted out but Nicolas stepped to the stairwell; just as he did, Schuyler came trotting down in a dark suit with fresh shirt and tie.
“Perfect timing, Father,” Schuyler said. “I’m off to Restaurant Row. Join us for a toddy or two before supper, why don’t you
?”
The sight of Schuyler calmed Nicolas’s nerves. “I must tell you”—he clasped his son’s shoulder—“I learned more about the Voodoo Doctor from the professor. It’s possible our voodoo man knows about the child labor trade, maybe right here—on Galveston’s docks.”
Schuyler gave a start. “If anyone knows about the docks, it’d be him. Why don’t we search out the fellow on our way to dine?”
“Excellent plan.”
Father and son had taken only a few steps in the direction of Restaurant Row when a baby-faced young man approached. Nicolas recognized the lad as the student Patrick from the medical college.
“I’ve a missive for a Mr. Van Horne, the ice merchant,” Patrick said self-importantly. “I believe that’s you, sir.” He produced a small rose-colored envelope from his jacket.
Nick—
So nice to hear of your arrival.
If you please, could you meet me at Trudeau’s at half past eight for coffee?
We can talk, briefly.
Renée Keiller
Nicolas was so befuddled he began frantically searching his vest pocket for his watch, before remembering the timepiece lay buried in Mississippi silt.
“It seems I’ve something to attend to,” he told Schuyler, tucking the note in the pocket of the weather-beaten peacoat he’d borrowed from the river pilot. “Perhaps I’ll dine with you later.”
“Do catch us at El Malhado,” Schuyler said. He started down the street, then stopped and called over his shoulder. “I’ll stop by the voodoo man’s office on my way.”
“Schuyler! That Turkish bathhouse? You say it’s in the next block?”
77
Coffee at Trudeau's
Antoine Trudeau, the French restaurateur, had expanded his accommodations since Nicolas last dined at his establishment. All told, six dining rooms—elegant, spacious, and spread over three floors—were new. Counting the kitchens and smaller, private dining rooms Trudeau had tucked away beyond the general public’s line of sight, the expansion engulfed the entire commercial building.
