Forgotten News

by Jack Finney

  Inside City Hall: "The room was crowded, the lobby in a great measure filled, and the stairs, portico, and City Hall steps were occupied by a large number of expectant spectators."

  John Eckel and Snodgrass sat in the courtroom "in the vicinity of their counsel, in charge of two Sheriff's officers. The prisoners attracted general attention. Neither seemed very much annoyed. Snodgrass conversed freely if not jocularly with his friends. Eckel remained impassive…. Eckel's appearance, it must be admitted, fails to give any serious indications of a murderous nature. Indeed he is rather good looking. The only unpleasant feature about him is his eyes. They are small, greyish-blue —rather protuberant and bloodshot."

  Henry Clinton came forward, and offered his arguments as Judge Brady listened. And then agreed. He discharged Snodgrass altogether: no one any longer seriously thought he'd had anything to do with the murder, and Connery had already examined him as a witness; twice, in fact. As for Eckel and Emma Cunningham, Brady called in a messenger boy, and sent word down to Connery to put into writing—right now, today—on what grounds they were held. While Clinton was at it, he obtained and sent along with the messenger writs of habeas corpus for Helen and Augusta.

  Helen was on the witness stand, following Augusta, when the messenger arrived at 31 Bond: they weren't even well started with her testimony when Recorder Smith had to explain to the frustrated spectators that "… it would be contempt of court to detain this witness. The cheated crowd cried, 'Shame! Shame!' " but they had to let her go. And as she and Augusta put on their veils upstairs, Coroner Connery's big plans for this day were reduced to bringing down nine-year-old William Stuart Cunningham—and Connery couldn't even stick around for that.

  He went off to write his appeal to Judge Brady, and as Connery worked, Willie satisfied Recorder Smith that he understood the significance of an oath, was sworn, and climbed up into the dental chair, his legs certainly not reaching the footrest, possibly even sticking straight out as he sat there. Then even nine-year-old Willie demonstrated that he, too, as a reporter said, was a "cool and self-possessed" Cunningham. After Smith had questioned the boy about the evening before the murder as the family got Helen ready to leave for boarding school in the morning, Smith got tricky, even sneaky. "After you went to bed that night how long was it before you heard the noise?"

  And got nowhere. "I heard no noise."

  A little later Smith tried again. "Did your little brother speak to you about the noise when you woke up in the morning? Don't you recollect him speaking to you about that?"

  "No; when he woke up in the morning, he told me something about my cousin, and then I got up and got dressed."

  Smith abandoned it. "… When you went to bed where did you leave [Snodgrass]?"

  "I left him marking my sister's clothes. He said he wanted to go down and wash his neck."

  "What did he want to wash his neck for?"

  "It was dirty."

  Learning nothing helpful from Willie, they put on his older brother, ten-year-old George. His was a different nature, and: "He sobbed and cried very much, and was evidently greatly frightened." They quieted him, and presently Smith tried again: "Who woke up first when the noise was heard in the night, you or your brother?"

  "I never woke up. I did not hear any noise in the night."

  "You did not?" Smith went on, beginning to make Coroner Connery look good.

  "No, Sir."

  "You did not hear any noise?"

  "No; I sleep very light, too."

  Presently: "The boy burst into another fit of crying." Smith tried to continue but: "The witness did not reply … his sobs increased, and … 'Oh! do let me go, I want to go upstairs. I feel as if I want to puke,' " the Times quoted George ("… want to be sick," said the Trib), and that was the end of the day's testimony from the Cunninghams.

  The drama was downtown now, Emma Cunningham waiting in the sheriff's office of City Hall to find out whether she'd be forced to return to 31 and face questions about the murder, or be freed of them forever. In the street outside: "An immense assemblage congregated in the vicinity of the Courtroom at 3 o'clock, for the purpose of seeing the prisoners.

  "The anxiety was increased by the knowledge that not only Mrs. Cunningham and Eckel, but the lady's two daughters would be produced in court, writs of habeas corpus being sued out, and served on the Coroner for their return in the interval before the Court resumed.

  "A strong posse of policemen and sheriff's officers kept guard at the doors of the Courtroom," then, all three of them veiled, "Mrs. Cunningham, Miss Augusta and Miss Helen Cunningham were brought into Court about a quarter past three o'clock. Their entrance was the signal for a general neck-stretching rush, accompanied by an excited murmur from the officers.

  "While entering the Courtroom, Mrs. Cunningham met with a slight, though for a time painful, accident. Walking with her head bent to evade, probably, the piercing glances of those congregated, she struck her head with great violence against one of the half-open doors. The blow stunned her for a moment, and she seemed as though going to fall, but one of the attendant officers caught her and conveyed her to her seat, where she soon recovered.

  "The ladies took their seats by the side of Mr. Clinton, their counsel. Mrs. Cunningham removed her veil. She looked pale and exhausted, but gave no indication of nervousness or fear … [and her face] wore its usual decided and masculine expression…. Her daughters remained closely veiled."

  Connery had made an awful mistake: his written orders for the confinement of Eckel and Emma Cunningham were now read aloud; and, the coroner had said, he wanted to hold Eckel as witness and suspect both. But of course this was a flat legal impossibility: an arrested suspect cannot be made to testify against himself as a witness.

  Henry Clinton exploded. He did not ask, he now said to Judge Brady, that Eckel actually be discharged "on a mere technicality on account of the blundering inefficiency of this officer, Coroner Connery…." Confident as they were of the final outcome for Eckel, "they did not wish that he should escape on account of the stupid, the miserable, the wretched, the contemptible, the disgraceful blundering of this man who had [just now] given them another written evidence of his stupidity, as though it were not plainly enough established already." He asked that the court adjourn once more, and another message be sent to Connery "that he no longer trifle with the Court, but … take the one ground or the other in reference to Mr. Eckel."

  Brady didn't even bother: he simply discharged Eckel as a witness right then and there, ordering him held as a suspect only—exactly what Clinton had hoped for, I think; he could hardly have expected that a prime suspect would be turned completely loose. But now Eckel was free forever, if he chose never to talk, from questioning by anyone about Harvey Burdell's murder.

  Clinton asked for the same decision for Emma Cunningham and, for good measure, "that the decision in her case include … that her counsel should have the right to consult with her whenever they pleased … without the august presence of our great magnate, the Coroner, any of his officials, his policemen, or his dignified son, John. (Laughter.)"

  He got it. Brady ordered: "That the said Emma A. Burdell be remanded to the custody of the Coroner … at No. 31 Bond-street… until the rendition of the verdict of the Coroner's jury … on the ground solely of being held as a party implicated … and not as a witness." And Emma Cunningham, too, was forever free of Connery.

  While he'd had her and Eckel, Connery could have questioned them at any length: about the quarrels at 31 Bond, the alleged thefts from the Doctor's safe, the strange marriage, the threats; and about how it could be that a man in their midst could fight for his life, his cries apparently heard out on the street, while they'd slept through it all, hearing nothing. Too late now; he'd given Emma Cunningham time, and she'd used it to beat him.

  Brady ordered Augusta discharged from custody on any ground, and ordered that while Helen's interrupted examination could be resumed, she would appear "as a witness only, and not subjected
to detention."

  The Cunningham women went back to 31 Bond, taken there in the enclosed carriage that brought them, I would expect; but "Eckel was taken to the Chief's office below, where an arrangement was made by which he might escape the annoyance of the curious throng who waited impatiently outside for his appearance."

  Who thought up this arrangement, I don't know, but I wonder if it wasn't Eckel himself, the man who loved disguises. "His hat and coat were exchanged for the hat and coat of Mr. Wetmore, of the City Prison, who then, in company of Officer Masterson, proceeded across [City Hall] Park, and down Centre-street to the Prison. The crowd followed after, pushing and struggling madly to get a sight of Eckel. Those fortunate enough to get a 'good look' left satisfied, while their places were quickly filled by others. It was discovered, however, before he reached the Prison, that Mr. Wetmore was a counterfeit, and not a very good one either, for Eckel had large black whiskers and light hair, while he, Wetmore, had black hair and no whiskers. The sell being quickly learned, the crowd retraced their steps in haste to the Chief's office, where they learned that they had indeed been sold—for Eckel had a few moments before left for the Tombs in charge of Sergeant Murphy, via Broadway and Franklin-street, unrecognized and undisturbed."

  At 31 Bond this wreck of a day finally ended for Coroner Connery. He adjourned till morning, further from pinning the murder on anyone than he'd been a full week before. Just before everyone left the room he stood up to say forlornly, "… I wish it to be understood that I had a witness sworn and under examination at the time she was removed from my jurisdiction…. I have submitted to every order that came to me…. And now, notwithstanding all the barbarity that has characterized this atrocious murder, I am informed that Mr. Snodgrass is walking about Broadway… ." It was worse than that, of course, and I expect he learned so soon afterward; that he would have waited around to hear.

  As Connery finally walks out into the winter evening, it's too bad it's not possible to let him know, across a dozen decades, that help is coming. That, in a sudden melodramatic development surely better than even his gaudiest daydream, everything will suddenly go his way, even the newspapers swinging around to applaud. Be nice to do that; he'd have something better to say to his wife than he does now, walking along Bond Street through the dusk toward home.

  9

  "Feb. 9, 1857. Dear Sir," a man sat writing somewhere in New York Monday morning. "I have to-day heard that a man of the name of McFarrell, employed in the Appraiser's Store, under Mr. Graham, has said that he was in Bond-street at the time of the murder…." He continued writing, then concluded, "He assigns as a cause of his not making it known that he was afraid he might be kept from his family and inconvenienced by his appearing as a witness, as he is a poor man." Then, having just blown the other man's cover, he hung on to his own: "I am yours respectfully, ONE WHO SEEKS FOR JUSTICE," and sent the note off to the Coroner by messenger.

  This same morning, first thing, Connery sent a cop down to the Tombs to bring Eckel here—in a closed carriage, he ordered, so that the crowd outside wouldn't see who it was as he arrived. Over the weekend, Helen Cunningham had finished her testimony, stonewalling them as effectively as Augusta had; little George finished his testimony, from which they learned nothing helpful; and the inquest had dragged on. But today Eckel arrived, they put him off in a room under guard, and swore in Emily Sallenbach, the piano-playing girl at whose apartment on Broadway Mrs. Cunningham and Augusta had waited for the man who met them there on the night of the wedding. They took Emily into the room where Eckel sat waiting, and she stood there staring at his face. Then she returned to the witness stand: "Yes, Sir," she said in reply to the question, "that is the gentleman that was at our house."

  But of course they couldn't question him. Not now. Or Emma Cunningham. These were "by all odds the most important witnesses yet produced in this case," the Times said later. "They must know something of the murder…." But: "Their mouths have been closed…. Why is it that these parties have not been examined before?"

  Well, they hadn't, and Connery was reduced to what surely seemed a forlorn hope. He'd sent someone to investigate, after receiving the anonymous note, and learned there was nobody named McFarrell working at the Appraiser's Public Store. There was a man named Farrell, though, and Connery sent out a subpoena for him now, to appear in the morning. His final order of the day was "to the police officers, to have all the carpets in the house taken up and all the floors examined," which shows, it seems to me, how desperate he felt.

  In the morning—of what turned out to be the most spectacular day of the inquest—things began in a typically farcical way. The first scheduled witness was A. DeWitt Baldwin, one of the passersby in Bond Street who had smelled burning cloth the night of the murder. And Coroner Connery—conceivably out of excitement because by now he knew what was coming later—got things rolling by calling out, "Officer, call DeWitt Clinton!"

  "… DeWitt Clinton not appearing," the Times said (Clinton had been a well-known New York political figure, now thirty years dead), Mrs. Jane Miller was sworn and examined by visiting Judge Capron. She was merely an acquaintance of Dr. Burdell who had happened to drop in and see him on what turned out to be his last day. And again typically, she knew nothing to help the inquest.

  But today this didn't matter: by now Connery knew what his main witness was going to say, and the first few witnesses were merely preliminaries: once again Eckel had been sent for from the Tombs, and they were just marking time till he got there, because this time keeping his mouth closed wasn't going to help. Eckel arrived, was taken to an upstairs bedroom; and then to the witness stand, to be sworn and examined by Judge Capron, there came the inquest's most sensational witness. He was John Farrell, thirty-two years old, married, and with three small children. He lived in Mott Street near the corner of Houston, at number 274, "at the rear of a small groggery, the keeper of which is his landlord."

  Farrell sat down, looking like this to newspaper artist Brightly; and then the big question. Had he been in Bond Street, Capron asked him, on the night of the murder?

  "I was."

  "Where were you?"

  "I was on this stoop that night," he replied astonishingly.

  "At what time?"

  "It might have been half past ten … it was between ten and eleven…."

  "How came you to come there?"

  "Can I tell?"

  "Yes, tell your story."

  "I started from my house likely about half past nine o'clock that night. I have a disease of the back, and I work at a business which requires my sitting bent over, and I have frequently to get up and exercise myself…. Sometimes it takes me an hour to straighten myself, and sometimes more." He made ladies' shoes, he said, working at home, and: "This night I had some particular work for the man I worked for, a particular kind of customer gaiters which he wanted done next day, and they having heels on which was rather troublesome, I concluded to go out and walk, till my back got straight and did not ache so much, and come back and see if I could not do something at night. And I did work for an hour."

  Farrell walked around for a while, he said, and presently came "up the Bowery to Bond-street, [and] came down this side of the street. I got within a few doors of here, and I stepped on the string of my shoe—the same that I have [on] now—and drawed the string nearly out, and I stooped down. It was sloppy, and I set down on this stoop here, and I took the shoe off, and was trying to fix the string in at the proper place. The string, I found, had not the tin usually on the end. It took me some time. While sitting there a man came along—two men…." They were walking west, but were not together, Farrell said, and the second man walked on. But the first, who was wearing a shawl, he remembered, turned in and came up the stairs, "on the right-hand side … I set on the left, close to the railing."

  Did this man wear a cap or a hat? Farrell couldn't recall. But: "You remember the shawl?"

  "I remember the shawl because it was on the same height with my head wh
en I first looked at it. Then I threw up my eyes as he got on the higher steps."

  The man with the shawl walked on past him, climbing the stairs of the stoop, said Farrell, entered the house, the door closing, and "I heard the footsteps retreating from the door." The man had been inside only a short time a minute, minute and a half, two minutes: he wasn't sure— when "I heard a cry of murder. I said to myself, 'There is a muss in this house, probably…. I guess they have been drinking….' " Farrell said:

  The cry that I heard was of a man being choked, for I remarked that especially, for I thought that the man that went in had caught hold of some person and choked him, inside."

  Farrell heard no other sound, he said, "with the exception of some men talking on the corner of the Bowery and Bond-street," and he resumed trying to fix his shoestring.

  Another witness, an architect named William Ross, had testified here last Thursday that he had walked along Bond Street on that same night … at about the same time … and with another man walking ahead of him. This man had turned in at number 31, unlocked the door, and gone into the house. So far, exactly what Farrell had just described.

  However, Ross said they'd both come from the direction of Broadway, and so were walking east; and had also walked separated by a hundred feet or more. While Farrell said the two men he saw came from the opposite direction, and only a few feet apart. Otherwise their testimony agreed; for Ross had said that within a very short time after the other man had entered number 31—"when I got … two houses further on he, too, had heard a cry of murder. He looked behind him, saw nothing, and looked up ahead toward the Bowery. And there, like Farrell, Ross saw several young men, "that were kind of roguish," Ross had said, "making a noise." He decided that the cry of murder had come from them, and walked on.