The Teratologist

by Ward Parker

  The great man stood behind his desk as they entered the library. The walls were covered in red silk, but the dark wood paneling of the room kept it feeling masculine.

  “Thank you for coming by,” Flagler said as they sat down around his ornately carved wooden desk in front of the fireplace.

  “Of course,” William said. “I sincerely apologize for the trouble my son has caused and I’ll do whatever I can to make reparations.”

  Flagler was tall, thin, and stern, in a black frock coat with matching vest and trousers. Aside from a magnificent white mustache, he appeared much more austere than the opulence of his mansion.

  “I don’t know if you’re aware of this or not,” he said, “but your father fought me every mile of the way with my railroad. Trying to scuttle my land deals, buying rail and crossties he didn’t need to drive my costs up and bankrupt me.”

  “No, I wasn’t aware.”

  “He wasn’t trying to build a rival railroad. He simply didn’t want one built at all. I never understood that, as there are abundant phosphate resources in this state that your father could have mined. At times I believed he had a personal vendetta against me.”

  “Not at all,” William said. “I’ve never heard him say anything like that.”

  “The reason I mention this is that I have always welcomed you at my hotels out of pure hospitality—not to curry favor with your father. Despite the fact your son has created unease among my guests, even when he was younger.”

  “I understand.”

  Flagler studied Follett briefly. “Dr. Follett, I imagine you came along to persuade me that Darryl is not at fault for his actions due to some medical condition or other? Because I truly do not care. It’s much too late for that, I’m afraid.”

  “I do believe, in fact, that Darryl did not intend to commit the attack here the other night, nor the one at the calaboose,” Follett said. “And I’m convinced he has nothing to do with the disappearances.”

  “You’re entitled to your beliefs and I apologize for not getting to the point of this visit. I’m afraid I must ask you, Mr. Stockhurst, to check out of The Breakers. Your son is a serious threat to every guest at my properties and I can’t risk him returning in order to see you. I’ve hired a detachment of Pinkertons to protect the grounds of both hotels. They are heavily armed, if you understand what I’m saying. I cannot risk having Darryl prowling the properties, and you don’t want him risking his life to come here.”

  William stood. His face was red and his hands trembled.

  “There are other, smaller, lodgings here on the island and in West Palm Beach that should be sufficient if you wish to remain down here,” Flagler continued.

  “Are you saying,” William said in a tight, clipped voice, “that your hired thugs will shoot my son on sight?”

  “I’m saying that the professionals I hired—Pinkerton is the best private security company in the world—will protect my guests. One of whom was recently decapitated by your son.”

  “Oh, I’m well aware of the Pinkertons and their trigger-happy ways. I know how they slaughter striking workers. But they are not sworn law-enforcement officers and they have no right—”

  “No, you have no right to do anything on my properties without my say-so. I make the rules here. I’m helping our paltry local law enforcement stop that monster from killing anyone else. If we can’t capture him without harm to my men or my agents then they will shoot to kill, anywhere on my properties or on the whole blasted island.”

  “You’ll hear from my attorney,” William said in a low voice, his eyes steely with resentment.

  The butler appeared, without being summoned, to escort Follett and Stockhurst from the mansion.

  “I must get word to Father, somehow,” William said as they walked down the long drive from Whitehall to its front gate.

  “I’ve been told he’s out of the country,” Follett said.

  “On a humanitarian mission to support our troops in the Philippines. But his ship can receive wireless telegrams.”

  * * *

  The last time Ned Pritchard had personally killed another human being was when he shot a deserter from Grant’s Army in 1864. Since then, he prided himself in keeping his hands clean, metaphorically speaking—not counting spatters of blood from “persuasion sessions” he supervised. Even after being in charge of wiping out a few smaller Indian tribes during the twilight of his Army career and killing some uncooperative gold miners in North Dakota, he could go to confession without breaking any more Commandments. Except those of the “thou shall not covet” sort.

  Remaining above the fray allowed him to comport himself as a true gentleman. People can tell if you are one, after all. Such as Mrs. Stockhurst’s housekeeper, Helga Schilling, who treated him with such deference.

  “I am so sorry, sir,” she said, “but Mrs. Stockhurst is resting right now. She’s not feeling well. Can I offer you some tea?”

  “Thank you, no. But let me offer you a little something. A bonus from your employer, Mr. Benjamin Stockhurst.” Pritchard slipped her a wad of cash. “You do know that he is the one who pays your salary, don’t you?”

  “Of course, sir. Thank you!”

  She stared eagerly at the cash gripped in her hand, but forced her eyes back to Pritchard’s.

  “Now Mr. Stockhurst sent me with some questions for you which he expects you’ll answer fully. Please sit down.”

  She sat in a dainty chair across from his which seemed ill-suited to support her bulk.

  “Shall we get started?” Pritchard said. “Who was the physician who paid a visit to the house this week?”

  “Let me see. His card is right here.” She went to the drawing room’s mantelpiece upon which was a brass dish holding calling cards. She carried it to Pritchard and sat down again. “Frank Follett, MD.”

  “What did they discuss?”

  “I have no idea, sir. They met in private.”

  “Now, Mrs. Schilling, I imagine like any good housekeeper you’d have your finger on the pulse of everything that happens in your household. I imagine, then, you’d surely pick up a few snippets of conversation issuing from the room while you performed your duties.”

  “Sir, I should not mention things I accidentally overheard.”

  “I understand. But in that case Mr. Stockhurst will want your bonus back,” Prichard said, holding out his open hand.

  Her eyes widened.

  “It is vital to Mr. Stockhurst’s interests to learn about this doctor. That’s what the bonus was for.”

  “Well, I suppose I could mention that the doctor was asking questions about the grandson—Darryl is his name. He was born with…difficulties?”

  “Yes, I know. What did the doctor want?”

  “He said he studied birth defects. Mrs. Stockhurst said afterwards that he was a ‘monster doctor.’”

  “What did Mrs. Stockhurst say about Darryl?”

  “Oh, just the usual about how upsetting the situation was for her.”

  “What else did they discuss?”

  “Oh, not much else. I was dusting in the hallway and the door to the parlor was closed. I really didn’t hear much.”

  “Was Mr. Stockhurst the Senior mentioned?”

  Her eyes darted to the door of the room and back. “No.”

  Officially, Pritchard didn’t know any secrets about his employer’s personal life. Unofficially and off the record, he regularly paid off the old man’s mistresses or ensured their silence in other ways. His orders had implied this mission was similar but of greater importance.

  “Helga—may I call you that?” he said, leaning over and patting her forearm, “you really must be more honest with me.”

  She let out a squeal as his hand clamped down on her arm, his fingers digging into her flesh.

  “Mein Gott,” she whispered.

  “Mr. Stockhurst is deadly serious about this. He wants to know what Gloria said about him. Everything she said. If you leave anything out I will know a
nd I will hurt you.”

  He squeezed harder and she yelped.

  “Please stop. I’ll tell you—she said he was the father of her child.”

  “Who was?”

  “Mr. Stockhurst. He had forced himself upon her. But I would never say a word to anyone. Honest. I am very discreet. All servants know secrets; the good ones know how to keep silent. It has always been that way.”

  “I understand, Helga,” Pritchard said, releasing his grip. “Of course you are very discreet. And you have impeccable references of which I am well informed.”

  He stood and walked to the front window that overlooked Gramercy Square. He lowered one of the shades and after a moment raised it again.

  “Does Mrs. Stockhurst get many visitors?” he asked as he watched the square. He already knew the answer since he maintained constant surveillance of the house.

  “Never, sir. Only the doctor, who she seemed happy to see because she has been feeling ill lately.”

  “What about when you are not on duty?”

  “The only other staff we have here are the cook and a maid. They have strict orders not to allow anyone in when I’m not here and they report to me that no one has ever come calling, except for the doctor and you. Even repairmen are not allowed unless I supervise them.”

  “Do the cook and the maid speak with Mrs. Stockhurst?”

  “The cook never sees her and the maid does not speak English. She is Hungarian.”

  Pritchard knew the only foreign language Gloria Stockhurst spoke was Italian.

  “What about letters? With whom does she correspond?”

  “Only her mother and sister.”

  Pritchard knew this, since a paid source at the post office handed over all of her letters which he read before posting them again.

  Finally, the service door slammed below and feet marched up the stairs from the kitchen.

  “Who is there?” Helga called, standing up, her face concerned.

  “Your new rug,” said a short, dark man with an Irish accent as he and another man walked into the room with a rolled up Persian carpet over their shoulders. They placed it on the floor at the edge of the existing carpet.

  “But I—”

  “It’s a gift from Mr. Stockhurst,” Pritchard said. “For his daughter-in-law.”

  He turned and walked out of the room, hearing her shriek cut short, reduced to gagging sounds as large, beefy hands pulled a rope tight around her neck—the rope that she would later be found hanging from in an obvious suicide.

  Standing in the foyer, he glanced at his pocket watch. Eight-thirty a.m. The cook should still be at the market and the maid, who had the morning off, was visiting an aunt. He took a deep breath and ascended the stairs. He had to take care of this himself, because it wouldn’t be proper to allow his men, they of the lower orders, to enter the lady’s bedroom in her presence. He, of course, was not at Gloria Stockhurst’s level, but he was as high-born as he would get on this job.

  The bedroom door was closed but unlocked. Heavy drapes over the windows kept the room dark and while his eyes adjusted, he suffered in the thick, stale air laden with perfume and exhalations. He caught the scent of gin as well. As he approached the bed, he heard her snoring faintly. She slept on her back wearing a sleeping mask, her mouth opened slightly.

  “Helga will be blamed for this,” he whispered, “but I’m going to do it more mercifully than she ever would.”

  He reached for an extra pillow and, pressing it with all his weight upon her face, began the long process of suffocating her. She struggled briefly at first, but it turned out to be a lot easier than this technique usually was.

  When Pritchard returned downstairs, he double-checked to make sure there was no evidence lying around. He then supervised the men as they hung Helga’s body from a water pipe in the servants’ bathroom downstairs.

  He left the house via the front door and when he reached the sidewalk he lit a cigarette and watched an old lady feeding pigeons in Gramercy Square. He noted that he had broken his streak of keeping his own hands free of blood. Well, a man’s got to make a living, hasn’t he? And his employer would never have accepted Pritchard assigning this job to anyone else.

  He passed the policeman who was standing on the corner, his back to Mrs. Stockhurst’s house. Pritchard handed him an envelope stuffed with greenbacks and the cop nodded his thanks.

  When he returned to his basement office at Amalgamated Chemicals, Pritchard found a letter waiting for him. It was the weekly report from Daniel Connelly, who earned a little extra cash informing Mr. Stockhurst on the activities of his son and Connelly’s boss, William, and Stockhurst’s grandson, Darryl. Rather than the usual two-paragraph summary, this one was five pages of tight, cursive handwriting. Pritchard sat down, put his feet up on the desk, and eagerly devoured the letter.

  It seemed that Darryl had gone berserk and had the blood of two men on his hands, one of whom was a society swell. There was a troop of Pinkertons ready to shoot to kill. Mr. Stockhurst would not be pleased about this.

  But the one piece of good news was that Pritchard would be saved from days or weeks of detective work. Now he knew exactly where the teratologist was.

  Pritchard went home to pack for his trip to Palm Beach.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  STOCKHURST DAUGHTER-IN-LAW MURDERED

  The headline grabbed Follett’s eye as he walked past the hotel newsstand. His heart sinking in dread, he grabbed a copy of the newspaper and quickly read about Gloria Stockhurst’s suffocation by her disgruntled housekeeper, who then hanged herself.

  Was this my fault?

  It had to be, he concluded. It would be too much of a coincidence otherwise. Benjamin Stockhurst must have spied on her and learned that she divulged his secret. If that’s the case, then he would know Follett was the one she had told.

  He hurried to the small home north of the hotels where William had relocated after Flagler told him to leave The Breakers. The mousy housekeeper answered the door.

  “Is Mr. Stockhurst at home?”

  “No, sir, he left for New York yesterday,” she said in her Irish lilt, “to attend the funeral.”

  “I see. I’m sorry about Mrs. Stockhurst. Would you know if she’d had trouble with her housekeeper?”

  “No, sir, I would not. Mister and the Missus kept completely separate households and none of us know any of her servants.”

  “Yes, of course. Is Miss Strom in by any chance?”

  “Sorry, sir, but she hasn’t come around as much with Master Darryl being gone.”

  That made sense, he knew, but he realized he would feel much better if he could be sure she was safe.

  * * *

  Ned Pritchard stepped off the train at the Royal Poinciana Hotel followed by his assistant, a Pole named Brezinski, who could kill just about anyone with his bare hands. Though he was a burly man, something about Brezinski hinted at being well-bred, instead of the former stevedore he actually was. The cut of his ginger mustache, the angles of his face, his careful bearing—whatever it was, Brezinski in his brand-new suit looked like he belonged at this fancy hotel. Which was critical, because discretion would be the theme of this assignment; nothing could occur that would get the snooty guests and staff all up in arms. The two men pretended they didn’t know each other, as Brezinski entered the hotel to register under an assumed name and Pritchard summoned a porter to gather his luggage.

  At the end of the train was a private railcar. Pritchard didn’t know whose it was, though rumor among the train’s passengers held that it was a member of the Rockefeller family. The car’s passengers hadn’t exited yet, but already porters were lining up several wardrobe trunks nearby.

  “Morning. Mr. Pritchard, isn’t it?”

  Pritchard turned to find a portly man with a handlebar mustache dabbing his face with a handkerchief. He recognized him as Flagler’s in-house detective.

  “Yes. I can’t seem to recall—”

  “Phineas Dowling, si
r, Chief of Security at the hotel. Does your arrival mean that Mr. Stockhurst is soon to follow?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Yes, your boss and my boss aren’t the best of friends, are they? So I assume you’re here to clean up the mess, then?”

  “The mess?”

  “Mr. Stockhurst’s grandson has been in a bit of trouble. Surely you’ve heard.”

  “Yes, I’m well aware. But Mr. Stockhurst always keeps me busy with a variety of assignments.” Pritchard started walking toward the hotel and signaled the porter to follow. “Do have a good day, Mr. Dowling.”

  After he checked in and was shown to his room, Pritchard changed clothes and went downstairs to the gentlemen’s drawing room where Daniel Connelly was waiting for him, reading the New York Sun in a leather wingback chair. He stood when Pritchard entered the room.

  Pritchard refused the offered handshake and said, “We haven’t much time. First, you need to show us, discreetly, who the doctor is. Then we’ll meet at another location to discuss the matter of Master Darryl.”

  “Right, sir. I believe Dr. Follett usually has a cocktail before dinner, so set yourself up in the bar and I’ll come in shortly and greet him if he’s there.”

  Pritchard went out into the cavernous lobby and walked past Brezinski, who was lingering by the candy counter. Pritchard touched the brim of his hat and Brezinski casually paid for a package of mints and followed him into the bar. They stood at opposite ends of the bar and Pritchard ordered a whiskey. He paid no attention to Brezinski.

  Before long, Connelly walked in, surveyed the room and then approached a table in the rear where a tall man with short brown hair sat alone. They greeted each other and talked with grim faces. Pritchard couldn’t hear them among the din of conversation in the room, but he imagined it was about Darryl. He glanced over at Brezinski to make sure he was making note of who Follett was. Brezinski met his eyes briefly and smiled.