Devil by the Tail

by Jeanne Matthews

  Somebody yelled, “Stop them hogs! Cut ’em off!”

  Crouched on the floor, Quinn peered out through a blizzard of dust. The hogs had turned and stampeded in all directions, chased by shouting drovers. Pedestrians scattered. Horses shrieked. Was there another shot? From somewhere, she heard glass shattering. Finally Garnick gained control of his big horse, the carriage slowed and came to rest next to the curb.

  He stuck his head in the window, a stricken look on his face. “Are you hurt?”

  “Just scared.”

  His eyes riveted on the bullet hole. “Stay low. The shooter may not be done.”

  “Did you see him?”

  “No. The shots came from above, maybe one of those windows in the mercantile over yonder.”

  She looked, but the windows were dark and empty. Practically every man in Chicago carried a gun, but the streets in this part of town weren’t known for being dangerous. They weren’t known for stampeding hogs either. “Some reckless drunk, you think? Somebody trying to cause a stampede?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Moses’ horns! You don’t think he was aiming at us, do you?”

  “It crossed my mind.”

  A few minutes went by and Quinn pushed herself back up on the seat, shying away from the hole where the bullet had lodged. The drovers began to get the hogs rounded up and the racket subsided.

  Garnick climbed back onto the driver’s bench. “I might have made a mistake giving out our calling card when I was nosing around after Stram this morning. Could be this is his way of telling me he ain’t desirous to make my acquaintance.”

  Quinn’s heart thudded and her hands shook. Only this morning she’d boasted to Winthrop how brave she was. She took a deep breath and anger displaced fear. She said, “If we find out it was Stram that shot at us, I will reconsider Mr. Handish’s suggestion about kicking his teeth down his throat.”

  ***

  She slept with the derringer under her pillow and woke at six to the complaints of a jay outside her window. Happily, the boarding house had invested in wire cloth for the windows to keep out flies and mosquitos, so the night had passed in relative comfort. However the sun was already beating through the lace curtains and left no doubt that it was going to be another scorcher.

  The aroma of Mrs. Mills’ coffee roused her to a pleasant state of alertness. Her landlady had a percolating machine, which meant fewer grounds to pick out of one’s teeth, and she was a fine baker, as well. Quinn looked forward to her morning slice of Sallie Lunn or apple crumb pie. But it was the feeling of waking up free and independent, accountable to nobody but herself that gave her the most satisfaction. If she could make a success of the detective agency, it would go a long way toward making up for those years she languished in her mother-in-law’s elegant tomb of a house.

  She donned a modest gray dress she’d worn during her half-mourning, braided her russet mane, and pinned it under a prim spoon bonnet. She didn’t want to be mistaken for a nymph of the pavement as she walked in a neighborhood teeming with brothels. She didn’t discount Winthrop’s admonition, or Garnick’s advice to beware of Gentle Annie. Last summer Annie took a horsewhip to her faithless lover, Cap Hyman, and flogged him through the streets, a ferocious show of love that persuaded him to ask her hand in marriage. In spite of the madam’s legendary antics, or perhaps because of them, Quinn looked forward to the adventure.

  At the breakfast table, her fellow boarders, Miss Gilbertine Nearest and Miss Ida Franks, were sharing a morning newspaper. Miss Franks, a thin, tight-lipped spinster in her late twenties, was an assistant telegraph clerk for Western Union and rarely uttered a complete sentence. Quinn attributed her terse speaking style to long days of nothing but di-di, dah-dah, and dit-dit. Miss Nearest could not have been more different in either appearance or disposition. Broad-hipped and brimming with enthusiasms, she spoke in long paragraphs replete with obscure facts and uplifting moral sentiments. She was a retired missionary and nurse who had accompanied Florence Nightingale to Egypt and Greece in 1849 and 1850. Quinn poured herself a cup of coffee and joined them.

  “The pastry is excellent this morning, Mrs. Sinclair, but the news is harrowing,” began Miss Nearest. “A Methodist missionary and seven Christian converts cooked and eaten by cannibals on some Fijian island. Viti Levu. A lone guide survived to tell the grisly tale. Those godless savages bashed the Reverend in the head with a rock, roasted him, and fed him to their chief.”

  “With forks,” added Miss Franks.

  “Yes, yes. And closer to home, sanitation workers found two badly decayed human bodies near the new water intake crib in Lake Michigan. Can you believe it? The engineering marvel that promised us clean drinking water and no live fish in our drinking goblets and now we must take care not to imbibe the remains of dead men.”

  “Horrifying,” said Miss Franks.

  Miss Nearest tapped the newspaper. “Here’s an interesting item. That spiritualist woman who’s been giving lectures on the blessings of magnetic healing has declared herself a Free Lover. Victoria Woodhull is her name. She says men are allowed all manner of sexual license and no law should infringe a woman’s natural right to love whomever she chooses and change her mind every day if it pleases her.”

  “The brass,” said Miss Franks.

  “She’s divorced, but living with…who is it now?” Miss Nearest straightened a fold in the paper for a clearer view. “Colonel James Blood. It says here that he’s in Chicago seeking a divorce. If he isn’t yet divorced–”

  “Bigamy,” pronounced Miss Franks.

  “So it would seem,” said Miss Nearest. “If they were legally married, why wouldn’t she call herself Mrs. Blood?”

  “Why shouldn’t she be able to call herself whatever she chooses?” asked Quinn.

  “You are being flippant, Mrs. Sinclair,” said Miss Nearest. “A married woman always takes her husband’s surname. She and her husband are considered one.”

  “And the ‘one’ is the man,” shot Quinn. “I rather admire this Victoria Woodhull’s brass. You ladies were wise never to marry. You haven’t had to live under the law of coverture, which means that a wife has no separate existence apart from her husband. She has no individual rights, no property rights, no say in what he does or how she’s treated.”

  “I quite agree that married women should be allowed more of a voice in matters affecting the home,” said Miss Nearest, “especially with regard to the process by which the population is increased.”

  “Gilbertine!” Miss Franks was aghast.

  “Now, now Ida. We mustn’t be old-maidish,” said Miss Nearest. “I’m sure Mrs. Sinclair was only repeating what some of those radical spiritualists have been saying. As a widow, she is as far removed from such concerns as you and I.”

  Quinn hid her irritation behind her coffee cup. It was no joy to be included in the same category as these eternally celibate old biddies. And what would they think if she told them she had a nom de guerre, investigated murder, and carried a loaded gun in her pocket? They’d demand that Mrs. Mills send her packing. She switched to a different topic. “You’ve been to Greece, Miss Nearest. Do you know the Medea myth?”

  “I saw the Euripides play in Athens with dear Florence, a special performance in English, and Miss Franks and I attended the adaptation at Crosby’s a few months ago with that Italian tragedienne, Adelaide Ristori. I will tell you this, Ristori’s interpretation of the Medea character could not have been more surprising. Instead of a cold, cunning murderess, she portrayed the sorceress as Jason’s victim, abandoned in a foreign land without recourse. A few bleeding hearts may have shed a tear. Not I. Her crimes were atrocious, did you not think so, Miss Franks?”

  “Wicked,” said Miss Franks. “Like that Elfie Jackson.”

  “Elfie Jackson isn’t a sorceress,” said Quinn, reflexively defensive. “I’d be surprised if she can read or write.”

  Miss Nearest helped herself to another wedge of cake. “Ignorance is fertile soil for sa
vagery, Mrs. Sinclair, as attested by the cannibals of Viti Levu. But I should think Miss Jackson’s ignorance is irrelevant, consumed as she was by jealousy and hate. As the poet said, ‘Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.’ Who was the poet, Ida?”

  “Congreve.”

  “Yes, Congreve. He could well have been describing Medea. If you wish, I shall lend you my copy of the play, Mrs. Sinclair. We can have a nice, long discussion about it when you return this evening from visiting your invalid brother in the hospital. It’s a very great kindness for you to spend so much time with him every day.”

  Quinn regretted the need to tell such a lie, but it wasn’t her fault people were so close-minded. She patted the derringer nestling in her pocket, bid the ladies good day, and set off to Annie Stafford’s brothel.

  Chapter 5

  Every seat on the horse-car was occupied save one, next to a sprawling, unkempt laborer who gave off an odor of fermented cabbage. Quinn squeezed herself into the space, shrinking as far away from the smell as possible, and brooded. If most of her gender held the same view as the boarding house ladies, it was just as well that only men were permitted to serve on juries. Of course she would try her best to discover exculpatory evidence but failing that, she hoped Elfie had a pretty face. Last year a jury acquitted a woman named Mollie Cosgriff of shooting her lover dead in Seneca Wright’s saloon. Her lawyer pleaded temporary emotional insanity, which may have influenced the verdict, but the jurors couldn’t have been oblivious to the accused’s comely shape.

  Quinn left the car on Randolph and crossed the street to avoid passing in front of the saloon. Most of the buildings on this side were dormitories housing the overflow of single men who flocked to the city to work in the slaughterhouses, lumberyards, rail and shipyards, and the new industries located to the south along the Calumet River. The presence of so many restive, untethered men with money in their pockets had given rise to a proliferation of gambling houses and brothels to take it away from them. She kept her eyes down and pretended not to hear the lewd calls coming from the saloon.

  A burly man with a head start on his drinking stumbled out of a doorway and bumped her. “Hey, fraulein, you want have some beers mit Horst, ja?” He caught hold of her arm, but she snatched it away and hurried on.

  She turned onto 5th Avenue and saw the “Why Not?” signs painted on the window shades. This was Annie’s place, but the idea of the “Why Not?” signs had been stolen from Roger Plant, whose squalid “Under the Willows” brothel still operated despite his retirement. Quinn checked behind her to see if anyone was looking and dashed through the red door with the number 155 in flaking gold leaf. The small vestibule was dark and dingy, the air thick with stale tobacco smoke, lamp oil, and rancid cologne. A narrow, steep stairwell led upward toward light and the sounds of bickering.

  “You’d get more trade if you do the French. Annie says she’ll give you an extra dollar off your keep.”

  “I don’t care if she gives me ten, it’s disgusting.”

  Quinn hiked up her skirt and climbed, topping out in a room with peeling red-and-gold papered walls, a crystal chandelier, and a row of red velvet settees. The bickerers faced off across a high pedestal table held aloft by a chipped marble nude. The woman who refused to do the French sneered and stalked off down a dim hallway. The man, hulking and beetle-browed, gave Quinn a churlish look. “Annie ain’t hiring.”

  “I’m not here to apply for work. I’m a detective.”

  “And I’m U.S. Grant.”

  “Will you please tell Mrs. Hyman I’d like a word?”

  He guffawed. “She’ll chew you up and spit you out.”

  She handed him a business card. “It’s important.”

  He gave it and her an appraising look and sauntered off, presumably to inform the madam. Quinn stood in a dark corner, afraid a customer would walk up the stairs and misapprehend her reason for being there. A miasma of cloying perfume and rampant lust pervaded the room. She thought about the kinds of transactions that took place here every day. How self-cheapening it must be to sell one’s body to strangers, over and over again. She suppressed a shudder of revulsion. Was it only this morning she’d defended Victoria Woodhull’s assertion of a woman’s right to the same sexual license as a man? Standing here, she was as sanctimonious and judgmental as the boarding house biddies.

  “What can I do for you, honey?”

  She turned in the direction of a high-pitched, scratchy voice and met the round button eye of a large green parrot. She crossed the room and stared into its brass cage. The bird lifted a foot off its perch as if in salute. “What can I do for you, honey?”

  “What’s your name?” asked Quinn.

  “His name’s Romeo,” came a voice from behind like rolling thunder. “Mine’s Annie.”

  She was enormous. Tightly corseted in a low-cut canary yellow dress, she resembled a belted balloon, the upper bulge near to bursting. Her hair was flame red, her eyes small and shrewd, and she emitted an aggressive fragrance of otto of roses. She thumped the business card. “Which one are you, Paschal or Garnick?”

  “I’m Paschal. Mrs. Paschal.”

  “Mrs., eh? Your old man must be a broad-minded cuss to let you sashay around in this part of town all by your lonesome.”

  “He was killed in the war.”

  “Well, cheer up. There’s plenty of live ones and all much the same but for the size of their wallets.” Her laugh rumbled and her vast bosom jiggled. She installed herself on a settee and filled it, arm to arm. “Take a seat, honey, and speak your piece.”

  Quinn alighted on the edge of a facing settee. “My agency is trying to locate a man named Jack Stram. He gambled at your husband’s place recently. Have you or any of your…your renters met him?”

  “I’m sorry to say I have. He came in drunk a while ago after Cap threw him out. Cap’s cursed with a tender heart. He let the cur slink off. Stram hadn’t been here ten minutes before he punched one of my girls. He’s one jasper should’ve been squashed in the cradle. Whoever it was paid you to find him, I’ll lay odds it wasn’t a woman.”

  “Do you know where Stram is staying or where he went when he left here?”

  “To the hospital, I guess. He was bloody as a stuck pig when he left here. There was a write-up about the fracas in the Tribune. Little snooper showed up saying he wanted to print my side so folks wouldn’t take me for a heathen. I said better a heathen than a Holy Roller that comes oozing in here of a Saturday night and leaves his wife at home to darn his socks. Damn if the paper didn’t quote me.”

  “Does the woman Stram visited know where he lives?”

  “You’d have to ask her. Name’s Jemelle Clary.”

  “Is she here?”

  “No more. Stram knocked out one of her front teeth and I had to give her the boot. Stupid heifer. I expect my girls to know how to dodge a fist and control their customers. She’s a waste of space now till her mouth heals.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “Lou Harper took her in over at the Mansion on Monroe. Lou’s a soft touch and Jemelle’s a fair earner, or was. A few of her regulars still come in asking for her.”

  “On another matter,” said Quinn, holding back a sarcastic retort, “I’m interested in another girl who stayed here for a while. Elfie Jackson.”

  “The fire bug.”

  “Alleged fire bug. Can you tell me anything that might cast doubt on her guilt? Did she perhaps have a…a visitor on the night of the fire? That would have been on Friday, the fifth of July.”

  Annie’s laugh erupted like a cannon.

  Quinn flinched. “What do you find so hilarious, Mrs. Hyman?”

  “Your mealy-mouthed delicacy, for one thing. Renter. Visitor. I ain’t bashful about running a whorehouse. Most of our ‘visitors’ are paying customers. My girls make four times the money they’d make in a factory and my cut of their earnings makes me rich enough to tell the do-gooders and reformers to go to hell.�
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  “I meant no offense,” said Quinn.

  “It’s nothing to me if you did.”

  “I’ll be blunt then. Did Elfie have a paying customer on the night of the arson?”

  Annie snorted. “That hellcat would gut any man who tried to touch her. She was here for a few weeks, slept on a pallet in Jemelle’s cubby, but Elfie never worked for me. She near about kept Jemelle from working. I don’t care if a girl pulls a knife if a jasper gets rough with her, but Elfie took a swipe at a customer who brushed up against her accidental like. I got onto her for interfering with the flow of business, told her to keep out of the way or clear out.”

  “Why did Jemelle let her stay if she interfered with business? Were they friends?”

  “They knew each other from Rock Island, or so they said.”

  “Did Elfie have any friends besides Jemelle or talk to any of the other girls?”

  “I’m no mother hen. Long as they do an honest day’s work and don’t hold out on me, who they gab with is their own affair.”

  “You say Elfie didn’t work. Can you tell me if she was here on the night of the fire?”

  “I don’t take a head count every night. Maybe Jemelle would know.”

  Annie was no mother hen, but those shrewd little eyes of hers suggested she noticed more than she let on. If Jemelle had known Elfie in Rock Island, it stood to reason she would also know Elfie’s lover. “Did Mr. Burk Bayer ever visit Jemelle or Elfie?”

  The big woman levitated off the settee with surprising lightness and loomed over Quinn like a giant yellow moth. “Enough of this blabber. Me and the mayor and the city council, we get on just fine if you know what I mean. Everybody feeds at the trough. Everybody goes home happy. But Kadinger was a bigwig with bigwig friends. His murder’s got the council running scared, spouting off about restoring morals and purging corruption. I don’t want sparks off that fire Elfie Jackson set blowing back my way.”