The Fatal Flame

by Lyndsay Faye

  “Alderman Robert Symmes owns a great many properties, and two of them have been burned by an incendiary using white phosphorus,” I replied cautiously. “Threatening letters were sent to him previous. Say nothing of the firestarter in the press, or we’ll be sharing the Hudson as a final resting place. But the motive is almost certainly vengeance originating from the strike.”

  Mr. Wolf looked up from his scribbling in some excitement. “A sewing girl turned anarchist?”

  “Do you think it’s possible?”

  “Possible and then some. Not so far as Miss Woods goes, mind. But Miss Abell? In a heartbeat.”

  My pate had begun to tilt in agreement before the words registered. When his meaning did land, my pen froze.

  “Miss Abell?” I couldn’t help but exclaim.

  Frown deepening, Mr. Wolf repeated, “Miss Abell, yes. I spent three of the strike’s six days sporadically interviewing them both, so it felt as if I came to know them rather well. The data is limited to my own impressions, however.”

  “Will you give them to me?” I badly wanted to know.

  He coughed pleasantly, adjusting his waistcoat. “Interesting. My impressions tend to be valued in printed form only, though I am the first to admit that my appearance carries distinct advantages to the undercover investigator—before you sits a man who, when dressed in rags or in feathers, is universally ignored if not kicked down the street. It’s terribly useful. I follow the natural flow of the river, you understand, only steering when absolutely necessary.”

  “If you’d describe the terrain in this case, I’d be indebted.”

  He smiled, an uptick that drew the corners of his mouth parallel rather than curved skyward. “Mr. Wilde, a single word has taken me further than I had dared hope in this world, and that is the word yes.”

  Settling more comfortably into his chair, Mr. Wolf delivered his account. Following the strike had been uneventful for him on the first day. Two days later, when he returned to collect more quotes and soak up the scene, the tailors had arrived and begun to make their displeasure known by lobbing obscenities and putrid vegetables. Mr. Wolf, whether from sympathy or suspicion they were ripe for a chat (I suspected the latter), asked Sally Woods and Ellie Abell to tea after the day’s protests. He’d done so again when he returned for the last time—that was Saturday, the day after the article appeared in the late Friday papers.

  “It had already rained all over them on their way to the manufactory,” he said, remembering. “Then a pack of hired bullies descended, and it was over in five minutes. Symmes ended the strike . . . definitively, though I can think of other words. There they stood, bedraggled as wet cats, exhausted and bruised to boot, their circle all but disbanded, though Miss Abell and Miss Woods lingered. Miss Woods was scarlet with fury, pacing interminably, while Miss Abell dispensed advice as to injuries among the outworkers. I bought them another pot of tea, as they were short, and wished them well.”

  “What gives you reason to think Miss Abell could possibly set fire to a slum?” I prodded.

  He spread his hands. “Here’s my recollection of the pair. First of all, they were thick as any set of thieves. Inseparable. The instant violence threatened on that picket line, their eyes were on each other—reassuring, defending, planning. And the brains behind the planning was without doubt Miss Woods. Her mind, Mr. Wilde . . . I marveled at it. Your women have been talking about equality for decades, but outside of my own people I’d never seen it, so I wasn’t sure it was possible for whites. She grasped questions of politics, business, housing. Miss Abell worshipped her.”

  “You don’t imagine extraordinary abilities can be used destructively?”

  “I meant nothing of the sort. You said you know women who are sharper than you? Well, Miss Woods is sharper than me, Mr. Wilde, and I know better than to burn down a building belonging to Robert Symmes. Another will pop up overnight. When half his businesses disintegrated in eighteen forty-five, did he bat an eyelash? Miss Woods is too keen to make such a dull play.”

  Baffled, I passed my fingers through my high hairline. “But Miss Woods frightens him. I saw it. Hell, I wasn’t exactly easy around her myself.”

  “The first time we met, she asked if it had been losing my family that led me to abandon tradition for enterprise and congratulated me for defying convention. No one is easy around Miss Woods.”

  “How did you answer?”

  “Since she was right, I told her my parents are Swedes, and very proud of me,” he joked.

  Half smiling, I topped up our gin. “And Miss Abell?”

  Mr. Wolf paused his note-taking, black eyes shining. “Miss Abell is affectionate, trusting, and well intentioned. I can’t possibly think of a person who would be more easy to manipulate. That’s why she was chosen for the final meeting between parties after the strike ended, I imagine.”

  I’d been riveted enough at the character study, but this was new information. My pulse sped instantly. “There was a meeting scheduled?”

  “Oh, yes. The article had been printed Friday and I brought them copies on Saturday. Brickbats and hired thugs dampened spirits worse than the rain, but the girls seemed hopeful even then, for they said Symmes had arranged a tête-à-tête to settle the aftermath amicably. Not with Miss Woods, mind, who could probably talk circles around the likes of him before calling for fresh rebellion, but with Miss Abell. She’d have made a far more impressionable emissary, or so the alderman must have surmised.”

  “She was to negotiate with Symmes and deliver the seamstresses his terms?”

  “Precisely so. Lacking a victory, they sought a just defeat.”

  Miss Abell’s face drifted into my mind. Her softness, the rushing but careful way she spoke, as if she were frightened her head couldn’t quite keep up with her tongue. She wasn’t dense by any stretch. But William Wolf was right. She was . . . malleable. And she’d been summoned to a meeting with Symmes. Alone.

  A sick, creeping feeling flickered in my guts.

  “So what don’t I know, Mr. Wilde?” the journalist asked.

  I’m not sure why I trusted him, though in retrospect I think it was as vain as the fact he reminded me of the parts of myself I can stand. Anyhow, I needed help in the worst way. So I spilled.

  “For one, Miss Woods was having an affair with Symmes.”

  “Wrong.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “No, she was his mistress, but I did know that. A few remarks from my interview with Symmes himself were . . . telling. Next?”

  Parting my lips, I paused. “After the strike ended and the friendship dissolved . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “I know that something happened between the three major parties, and I know it was vile. Neither girl can speak of Symmes without turning bloodless, and Miss Woods wants him drawn and quartered. Has this meeting between the alderman and Miss Abell any bearing, do you suppose?”

  He tapped his pencil on his knee. “It occurred after my last encounter with them. The trio’s relations are mighty convoluted, I take it.”

  “Mystifyingly so,” I affirmed, thumbing the edge of my writing pad.

  Failing to say, And I think Miss Abell was once in a family way, and I think she warns an engine company when death is about to strike, and I can’t understand any of it was difficult. But I managed to swallow those facts deep in my gullet. If I was right about Miss Abell, she’d already paid for her errors in blood. And if I was wrong, and word got out, she’d be disgraced if not permanently unmarriageable, thanks to me. Reputations have been razed to dust over lost kerchiefs and paper sentiments, let alone kinchin.

  “You thought I might have known what happened between them?”

  “I hoped you did.” I smiled crookedly. Then it slid off my face, not belonging there. I felt like hell.

  “Mr. Wilde, what are you thinking?” William Wolf questioned. />
  “I’m thinking something is hideously wrong and I want it set right again.”

  He nodded gravely just as my door flew open and a head with a wild grey mane appeared. Mr. Piest’s eyes bulged still more than the usual, his crabbed hands clutching both doorknob and frame.

  “You must come with all speed, my friend,” he panted.

  My feet were already under me. “What happened?”

  “It is still happening, I regret to report. Mr. Kildare took it into his head to experiment with rather more extreme measures against McGlynn in the name of evidence gathering.”

  “Shit,” I hissed, donning my hat. “Is it working?”

  “If it fails to kill him, it might.”

  “Come along?” I asked Mr. Wolf.

  Inviting him was an intuition, nothing more. But for a whim, it was zealously requested. I know I’m meant to be a star police, and I know I detest some of our practices, and I know sure as my pulse that the public are meant to trust us. And that we don’t always even attempt to deserve it.

  “What do you think?” Mr. Wolf gestured to the door. “My motto in all such matters is yes. I’m certain whatever is in store for us will be of interest to readers.”

  He hadn’t the faintest idea.

  18

  We especially protest with all the power of a revolted feeling against the brutality and insolence with which many of our Policemen have conducted themselves in the numerous arrests which have been made. We did not expect to find in this free country a Russian Police, nor do we believe that the people will sustain these officials in their evident abuse of power.

  —REPRESENTATIVES OF THE NEW YORK CITY INDUSTRIAL CONGRESS, NEW-YORK DAILY TRIBUNE, JULY 26, 1850

  WE HURRIED THROUGH CORRIDORS like vast catacombs, Piest and Wolf and I, the passages chilled though outdoors the April sun blazed. Passing brutes with iron on their wrists dragged by brutes with copper fixed to their coats. For all its monstrous size, the Tombs is always crowded in the afternoons. We elbowed past bailiffs, witnesses, victims. Bewigged lawyers, red-eyed lovers. When we missed the turn that leads to the men’s lockup, I caught Piest’s bony elbow.

  “He’s not in his cell?”

  “He is in the northwest corner of the yard, Mr. Wilde,” Mr. Piest replied with a terseness uncharacteristic of him.

  I groaned. “Damn it all directly to hell.”

  “What does the northwest corner mean?” Mr. Wolf inquired.

  I hastened my pace to match that of my eccentric Dutch friend.

  The sunlight as we stepped into the interior yard exploded in our eyes like the blast from a cannonade. The air was warm and faintly hazy, the open square blessedly free of the gallows. But in the northwest corner, I could already spy my friend Kildare lifting a heavy hogshead full of brown river water.

  “Wait!” I cried, causing his dark head to pivot.

  The fact that the Tombs is a brutal place is a burden I bear daily. I am well aware, however, that it could be still worse. For instance, we’re not allowed to whip prisoners, thank every kindly power. Bread-and-water diets with solitary confinement, never for very long periods if I’m honest, is the typical punishment for the raving canary birds we’re saddled with. They tend to quiet down after a day or two and stop trying to shiv one another, which is all we were after in the first place. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have alternative discipline for the absolutely intractable.

  It’s called, innocuously, the shower bath. If I could light it on fire, I would do, in a heartbeat.

  “My God,” murmured Mr. Wolf, who could now see McGlynn plain. Or his bruised bare torso and the top of his head anyway.

  The shower bath is a sturdy coffinlike box, made quite tall so the prisoner can stand upright when he’s stripped naked and put through the front door. McGlynn’s hands were both protruding from the walls, forced outward at right angles to his body in a queer adapted version of stocks. Above the arm restraints is a device that looks like a shelf with a fixed bowl resting on it, which also comes apart when a man is subjected to a dousing. Inside this bowl McGlynn’s head had been viciously secured by means of a hole in the base, while above him on a second shelf, a nearly spent hogshead of Hudson water trickled onto his pate, spilling over the brimming lip of the bowl. McGlynn was blindly, weakly thrashing in broken little twitches, straining to keep at least his nostrils above the water level, as the point of this charming contraption is that the mouth is submerged and the deluge all but drowns a man. Kildare had clearly been about to switch out the feebly leaking hogshead for a fresh one. His face was a study in cold rage.

  “How many is that?” I clasped him by his thick arm.

  “Mr. Wilde, what a pleasure. T’ be sure, I forget now,” he hissed. “May well be the third, ’tisn’t unlikely to be the fourth.”

  “Four hogsheads of river water?” I cried. “Are you out of your senses?”

  “Wilde, ye know who he is and ye know what he was after doin’. I’ll not be scolded by the likes o’ you, sir, fer all you’re a mate o’ mine. Let go.”

  I tightened my grip on his sleeve. “You’ve made your point.”

  “Christ, but ye’ve not stones enough to question a criminal?”

  “How in sodding hell are you meant to be questioning him? He’s halfway to drowned and can’t talk.”

  “Your innate nobility of spirit precludes you from continuing this most alarming exercise, Mr. Kildare,” Mr. Piest pleaded. “Come, you’ve doubtless instilled in him a most penitent, chastened—”

  “Why don’t ye leave police work to them as has balls fer it?” Kildare growled.

  Behind me, terrified gurgles and wet sniffs emanated from the shower bath. If McGlynn hadn’t drunk about a gallon of river water by then, I’d eat one of Piest’s boots. I’ve had nightmares about the shower bath. They don’t compare to being locked in it, frigid water everywhere, lungs afire, stripped and shivering and nigh berserk for a full breath. Still.

  “Who in hell is this, then?” Kildare demanded. He’d belatedly discovered William Wolf, writing shorthand at breakneck speed about ten feet off.

  “Oh, don’t mind me, I wouldn’t dream of hindering you.” Mr. Wolf looked up, but not at Kildare—at the shower bath and its miserable occupant. “I record things for posterity.”

  “A scientist, are ye?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Would ye like t’ see firsthand how this works, in that case?”

  Kildare’s eyes shone with resolve, his arm beneath my clutching fingers trembling under the weight of the full hogshead. My attention shot to Mr. Wolf as a pang of nerves lanced through me.

  “Yes.” William Wolf’s eyes darted to Mr. Kildare, the set of his downturned mouth equally resolved as revolted. I knew then that like Mercy he would stop at nothing, pay any price to see the world as it was. “Yes, do go on.”

  “This has gone quite far enough, as we are gentlemen!” Piest cried.

  “Put it down now, or we’re going to have an argument,” I ordered fiercely.

  “We’re going to have an argument, then, bless yer tender heart,” Kildare grated. “And me twice the size o’ ye in every place save maybe bollocks, ye mad bastard.”

  “You know as well as I do my size is completely irrelevant,” I snapped with new passion in light of recent revelations.

  “By Jesus, Wilde, let go, or I’ll—”

  “What in the name o’ holiness is going on here?” a new voice demanded.

  I started breathing again, though I didn’t unhand Kildare. Our friend Mr. Connell strode across the yard on angry legs, taking in the scene and the solution in one glance. He stepped straight to the shower bath and released the valve on the boxed-in lower compartment. Fish-smelling water gushed out, nibbling at our boots.

  “Switch that back off,” Kildare snarled.

  “I’l
l not,” Connell returned calmly. “Get a bloody grip on yerself, Ian, for the love o’ Mary.”

  “Dermot Connell, if ye don’t leave yer interfering hands off of the prisoner, who’s gettin’ what he sure enough deserves, then—”

  “Oh, aye, deserves,” Connell shot back. He busily unlatched sliding wood locks, freeing McGlynn piecemeal. “I’d like t’ see him hanged, meself. But he’ll not turn my best mate into a torturer, and I’ll not look at ye, Ian, and see a British soldier wi’ a great horsewhip in his hand. Drop the fucking hogshead afore I smash yer fool pate in.”

  With a furious curse, Kildare tore away from me and obeyed, throwing the heavy thing as far as he could—which wasn’t far. It bumped along uneven dirt to a sad halt. Connell opened the box and, reaching up, pulled the neck shelf with its flat-sided quadrangular bowl as if sliding open a dresser drawer. More water flooded free as McGlynn flopped from the shower bath onto the mud. Limp as a guppy and sucking in huge gasps of air.

  “New York’s defenders triumph again to thunderous applause,” I heard Mr. Wolf murmur under his breath.

  I winced—at his words and at the razor-wire tangle in my chest. But there was nothing to say. Turning to my friend Piest, I shook my head wordlessly before hastening to fetch McGlynn’s togs. They were sopping up liquid and smeared with dirt, but serviceable enough. I might have handed them to our captive. But when I thought about what he’d done, and how many times he’d likely done it, I merely tossed them at the wretched creature.

  “Right.” Mr. Connell palmed a hand over his fiery red pate. “Now yer in a reflective mood, when ye can breathe, we’ve a few more queries t’ pose by your leave.”

  Pushing to his hands and knees, McGlynn spat at the ground. His pale skin was bumpy as a plucked fowl’s, silhouettes of fists and boots mottled all over his fleshy frame. Only his skinny legs, trembling from fright and cold, remained unmarked by the copper stars.

  “Leave me alone,” he rasped when he could speak. “Please just leave me alone.”

  “In a minute,” I said. “Mr. Piest? You’re been searching for Miss Woods night and day. Anything to ask?”