The Fatal Flame

by Lyndsay Faye

  “When I’m reelected, I’ll see to it Captain Wilde is dismissed in disgrace.”

  “When you’re reelected,” Matsell answered with the glint of gunmetal in his eye, “you’re welcome to. Meanwhile, an incendiary threatens and the younger Mr. Wilde is one of those tasked with finding the culprit with all possible speed.”

  “I can’t say that bolsters my confidence,” Symmes sneered as his pocket watch made its first appearance. I don’t know how his pals felt about the timepiece, but I wanted to shatter the thing. “He is hardly even the intellectual equal of his turncoat brother. My warning was crystal clear, and nevertheless I am now the owner of a pile of soot where was once a thriving rental property. Disgraceful.”

  “Ronan McGlynn sends his regards,” I interjected, determined anew not to let my chief suppose I was inadequate to the task of chasing after a firestarter. “I’m not fool enough to pretend to like you, Alderman, but I’m not fool enough to let a crackbrained incendiary run amok through Manhattan either. So I questioned your employee last night. He thinks you’re en route to the Tombs to post bail.”

  “Oh, I fear I couldn’t conscience posting bail for Mr. McGlynn. He served me well enough as a property manager, no doubt, but while a man is entitled to, shall we say . . .” Symmes drew his tongue across his upper lip, considering. “. . . recreational female company, I was unaware McGlynn’s establishment took such an aggressive recruitment line. And on property rented from me, no less. I need not even bother with dismissing him but shall merely allow justice to take its natural course.”

  Smirking, he linked his fingers. I recalled Symmes’s mentioning fresh as they come to Valentine and actively detested him an additional dram for lying through his teeth to me.

  “McGlynn likewise pegged Sally Woods as the incendiary,” I continued. “Mentioned previous threats as well. I need to see them.”

  Symmes traversed his sumptuous Oriental rug, opened a squat but prettily worked English Chubb safe in the corner, and returned with a small bundle. Dropping it before my nose on the desk with a loud smack, he regained his chair and regarded me and the chief with the same respect he might expend on a spat lump of phlegm.

  We began to sort through and read them. The format, to my stifled alarm, was identical to the threat against the alderman’s buildings: the same heft of paper and typesetting printed on a single side with neatly aligned margins. Before we’d been reading long, Matsell and I had a graphic impression of the mental state of the author.

  I think my favorite was:

  You soulless fiend whom once I cherished, may you suffer exquisite torment in hell’s eternal fires for your crimes. May I be there, with all the water on planet earth at my disposal, and never lift a finger to ease the bubbling of your seared flesh.

  That one was . . . compelling. Though the chief, I recall, coughed when he encountered:

  Not a day passes when the dream of murdering you by my own hand fails to bring solace to this husk of a human, this empty vessel you drained so utterly dry.

  So maybe the latter had better claim to literary merit. Anyhow, they were certainly of a theme.

  “These are pretty . . . personal,” I suggested.

  A flash of feeling sharper than his usual umbrage appeared and disappeared. There and gone in a heartbeat, but informative nevertheless.

  Sally Woods frightened Robert Symmes more than she frightened me.

  Recovered, the alderman regarded his fingernails with perhaps unmerited interest. “Miss Woods is violently hysterical, and now she is a murderess to boot. Surely it’s small wonder that her monomania is passionately expressed.”

  “My impression of her—”

  “My impression of you, Mr. Wilde,” Symmes snarled, “is that you are so blinded due to personal dislike that you refuse to arrest a threat to this entire city. Had you imprisoned Miss Woods before now, my property would be intact and two dead people would be alive.”

  Since my hand was already wrapped into a fist, I settled on tapping it against my knee. “That isn’t quite what I meant. Or wasn’t Miss Woods your mistress? Matters must have ended about as badly as possible for her to want to kill you after you parted ways.”

  “How dare— My private life is not the concern of a stunted copper star with . . . with delusions of competence,” he spluttered.

  “It is, though. Under the circumstances.”

  “I am the victim of this heinous crime!” he cried. “What about this are you failing to grasp?”

  “Just what your relationship to Miss Woods was prior to the threats starting,” I answered dryly.

  “Oh, I was bedding her on a regular basis, Mr. Wilde,” he growled, leaning forward. “I wonder, though, whether ending a trivial affair with a saucy little manufactory wench quite merits death threats. And I wonder what steps I can take to protect myself, my property, and my city when you appear to have discarded your masculinity altogether and joined the ranks of murderous anarchists and bluestockings.”

  I’d have delivered a poor response to this if Matsell hadn’t prevented me.

  “So there’s a long-standing dispute between you and this Miss Sally Woods. Setting firestarting aside for the moment, bedding your garment workers was never going to end well, was it?” Matsell sniffed, seeming as much disappointed as galled. And truly, Symmes’s blend of arrogance and peevishness begged for a swift cuff to the ear. “Of all the multitudinous ways it could have begun and ended badly between you, just how did it begin and end badly, might we ask?”

  “That’s a personal matter.” Symmes waved his hand as if shooing a gnat.

  “Alderman, while I sympathize with your desire to protect both your holdings and your privacy, I’m considerably more motivated by the former. You’re the one who dipped your wick into your own payroll. Answer the question.”

  Symmes and Matsell exchanged lethal volleys with their eyeballs. It brightened me considerably. Then, as if a line in the sand had been smoothed over, the alderman’s fury was replaced by an almost pleased-looking moue of distaste. I wondered what on earth it meant and then realized that part of Symmes was glad at being forced to discuss his conquests—that he was as kittled rosy to brag about Miss Woods opening her legs for him as some would have been over displaying a rare species of butterfly drugged senseless and stabbed to a corkboard.

  It was, quite frankly, repellent.

  “Very well, if I am to be interrogated, let it be by the chief of police rather than an inept underling,” Robert Symmes whined, physically shifting in his chair to face Matsell. “From the moment my foreman hired her for the pantaloon manufactory we established in eighteen-forty-six, Miss Woods made every effort to catch my eye when I appeared on routine visits. Eventually she approached me directly after an inspection, bold as any heathen, to discuss the plight of the outworkers and better wages for the cutters. She’s a striking woman, and needless to say an immoral one—it took me all of a week to seduce her. Appalling. She argued, I listened or pretended to, and for all her factually absurd cant about equality, she was an inventive little slut between the sheets.”

  Eyes burning like embers in my skull, I stared back at him. I wasn’t certain he’d wronged Miss Woods at all beyond dismissing her from the manufactory, but when I recalled her saying in a lifeless tone, It’s personal, and can’t be helped anyhow . . . Between Woods herself and the Queen Mab, and even Jim’s hushed words of warning regarding the alderman’s reputation, a definite suspicion had formed.

  Rape is criminal and despicable. And about as easy to prosecute as it is to reach out and pluck the chime of a bell from midair. A rich woman attacked by a low brute was nearly sure to see justice done if she took the reputation-killing step of admitting to the assault in the first place, and I could convict McGlynn on brothelkeeping charges without violation even entering into the matter. But a woman of Sally Woods’s station against an alderman? When she was a tr
ouser-clad deviant? And had already given herself to him more than once? He could have kept her locked in a garret and tormented her for weeks and I could still never punish him for it this long after the fact. Every lawyer in Christendom claims “lack of feminine virtue and salacious signals led to confused circumstances” when defending a client against rape charges. In the case of Miss Woods, the crueler and more religious among us—who are sometimes the same people—would have said she deserved no better.

  So I simply stared at Symmes, the sickeningly happy tilt to his lips and the callous mirth in his eyes, and thought, Whatever you did, I will see that you pay.

  “Something ended it,” Matsell said flatly. “What?”

  “She went so far as to organize a strike for higher wages, the jezebel. I fired her so fast her pretty head must have spun. Oh, I showed mercy to the dim little sheep who’d followed her, but I could hardly have extended Miss Woods the same generosity. She is a completely unprincipled woman, the sort who is not only infamous for wearing obscene clothing in the amoral cause of destroying the balance between the sexes but is apparently capable of setting my property aflame.”

  Matsell arrowed a grey eye at me.

  “She’s a radical who favors unconventional dress,” I admitted.

  “She’s an offense against the natural order and thus presents an active threat to our system of values even if she weren’t a crazed firestarter,” Symmes shot back.

  “As if you have any idea what values look like,” I snapped.

  “Mr. Wilde, control yourself,” the chief growled.

  The alderman half rose, showing his teeth. “The good people of New York have chosen me to represent their interests, their principles, and yes, their values, you unbearable prick. Keep a civil tongue in your head when addressing your betters and arrest that madwoman before she can do any more damage to the metropolis and to my life. I’ve an election to win.”

  Best of luck with that, I thought acidly as Matsell stood to depart.

  “All necessary steps, including arresting Miss Woods should her arrest be what’s called for, will be taken without further delay if my staff knows what’s good for them,” Chief Matsell said, stabbing a riled finger toward my nose. “If we require further cooperation on your part, Alderman, I trust we have it. Wilde, you’re settling this business and settling it now.”

  “I need to keep these.” I reached for the stack of letters.

  “Take them and be damned.” Symmes sighed as the pocket watch made yet another appearance.

  “Do you have some other appointment at bloody six-thirty in the morning?” I demanded, having expended my small store of patience.

  “Yes, including but not limited to ruining your disloyal worm of a sibling.”

  “We’re through here,” the chief called, flapping a flipperlike hand as he lumbered out the door. I’d pocketed the evidence and taken two steps after him when Symmes rounded the desk and gripped me by the arm.

  “A word of warning,” he said in my ear. His classically handsome features had twisted into a dog’s brutal snarl. “If your brother withdraws his candidacy by the end of the day, publicly apologizes, and throws his support behind my own election, I will consider—consider, mind—showing him clemency in thanks for his previous years of service.”

  He returned behind his desk about half a second previous to finding himself punched in the jaw.

  “And if he doesn’t?” I wanted to know. “What then?”

  Descending into his chair, Symmes looked up with a smile. “If Valentine Wilde doesn’t withdraw, I will so utterly destroy that arrogant, ungrateful sodomite that he and everyone close to him will wish they had never been born. Think carefully on that, Mr. Wilde. And a very good morning to you.”

  11

  The spirit of opposition between the barnburners and hunkers waxes warmer and warmer every day. So great has the gap between them become, that they have entirely forgotten the principles for which they have been fighting, and are each trying now to oust the other from Tammany. . . . The barnburners go in strong for free soil, and are determined they will not yet give up old Tammany, where they have so long reveled in the pride of their physical strength.

  —THE NEW YORK HERALD, JULY 27, 1848

  I DIDN’T SET OFF TO arrest Miss Woods. Though I should have. Instantly.

  No, I marched straight for Val’s lodgings several blocks away from Symmes’s residence, selecting choice words for him as I traveled. It was too early for him to occupy his police captain’s office at the station house in Prince Street, and considering the way they’d left matters, the odds were against his having slept at Jim’s elegantly furnished digs near Washington Square. By then the sun had risen, illuminating the dress buttons of prim Irish housemaids walking to market and the lacquer of sweat on the brows of black laborers hauling bricks. Sure enough, when I reached the trim row house in Spring Street, there was movement in the parlor window of the second story, the floor that Valentine has kept for more than a decade.

  Making double time up the stairs, I knocked twice at Val’s door. Upon entering, I discovered that I wasn’t the first person to conclude my brother needed immediate sense pounded into him.

  “What in God’s name is going on?” I questioned.

  James Playfair stood in my brother’s kitchen amidst the shining glass jars of dried herbs and spices and the pot of Harlem honey and the dish of rendered pork fat for egg fry-ups. He glared into my brother’s mazzard with the expression Alexander the Great might have worn when he decided that acquiring more personal property might make for an engaging hobby. Jim could have been sitting on the back of a war elephant. He sported a neat claret cravat and a matching wine-red waistcoat, and his wiry chest heaved in anger. I’d never seen his graceful features twist so. Nor seen Val so alarmed by a mere facial expression.

  Val was in the state he usually endures following Party sprees—haggard, half dressed in an undershirt and trousers with braces hanging, eyes bloodshot above bags that might have carried a month’s post across the Atlantic. He sat in the kitchen chair he uses when peeling potatoes or plucking a fowl, and if Jim had just kicked him, he’d not have looked any less pleased.

  “What do you think is going on?” Jim snapped, and then paused, shaking his head.

  “How’s Bird?” I ventured with better caution.

  “I apologize, Timothy. Good morning. How are you faring? Bird is fine, and four dollars richer thanks to the greyhound which won the final contest at Vauxhall Gardens.”

  “Oh, aces, you’ll apologize after you mouth it at him,” Valentine noted cuttingly, slouching as he uncrossed his legs. Size being a natural advantage to the activity, no one can sprawl like my brother. Even when his complexion is the color of sperm-whale wax.

  “Do you know something, you’re right, Valentine, I am more than happy to apologize to you,” Jim hissed. “I sincerely apologize for suggesting that you intended to lose a boxing match for the benefit of Party solidarity, and I hereby express my sorrow that I did not sooner reach the conclusion you meant to risk your entire career upon an egotistical whim. Forgive me.”

  “You’re about this close,” Val reported, holding up an unsteady thumb and forefinger, “to actually angering me. I don’t calculate that’s a goal you’d feel chaffey over achieving.”

  “If it wasn’t a whim, then what was it?” I dropped my wide hat on the kitchen table. “Because it sure as hell is summery wasn’t a good idea.”

  “Symmes has been a thorn in my hindquarters for long enough,” Val spat. “He’s as gammy a politico as he is a fund-raiser, the Hall will ignore me if I lose and slap me on the back if I win, and anyway, the notion I’d go in for abusing a poor Irish chit in exchange for lioning some kate he sacked was the last straw.”

  “Symmes offered a carnal reward in exchange for Val’s assistance,” I explained to Jim’s baffled eyebrows. “Not th
e . . . ah, mutually agreeable variety.”

  “He’s a barbarian,” Jim concurred, appearing neither surprised nor any less livid. “I was playing for a benefit given at the Astor House and discovered Symmes meddling with one of the chambermaids when they sent me in search of more champagne. She’d obviously been struggling, and when I deliberately knocked over a mountain of soup tureens, she ran, and I departed with similar haste.”

  “So he’s a barbarian, and you’re still keen to vote for him and not for me as alderman?” my brother protested.

  “Yes, because now he is a barbarian who loathes you, Valentine.”

  “Flash.” Val yawned luxuriantly. “I’d hate to think my feelings were one-sided. Hell, I’ve wanted to torch his property myself.”

  “Well, now you needn’t,” I retorted, “because by all appearances our Miss Sally Woods has that task firmly in hand. Energetic materials were used to destroy one of his houses in Pell Street yesterday. Two people are dead.”

  “Oh, my God,” Jim gasped.

  Pulling the letters from my jacket, I shoved them at my infuriating sibling. “Look familiar?”

  Valentine sifted through them quickly and whistled. “Two people croaked, you say? For the love of Christ, Tim, any reason you’re not off clapping her in darbies?”

  “Because Symmes wants me to tell you that if you back him for alderman again by the end of the day, he’ll refrain from destroying you.”

  Jim shifted from foot to foot. “Valentine—”

  Val aimed a finger jab at his friend with such vehemence it would have broken skin had it made contact. “You’re about to suggest I hand over my bollocks to a peacocking prig who thinks slave states will disappear if only we shower them with enough commerce and compliments, and when I’ve already announced before the free republicans of the Eighth that their ward boss—who is also their police captain and the senior engineman of the Knickerbocker Twenty-one—will serve them better than a reprobate landowner who thinks shoving his cock where it isn’t wanted makes for a spruce hobby. Save yourself the breath.”