Felicity Carrol and the Murderous Menace

by Patricia Marcantonio

  “How kind of you to say.”

  “You appear educated, with all the attributes of a lady. Pardon me for being so personal.”

  “I’m the daughter of a butcher and a serving girl in Atlanta, Georgia. I labored in the tobacco fields and married for love, but my dear, dear beloved husband died and left me little money. I traveled out west for a fresh start. Along the way, I studied diction and learned to read and write. I worked diligently to act like a lady, because more doors open for them. Surely you must understand that.”

  “How’d you end up in Placer?”

  “Mining towns boom with commerce, so they made a perfect place to seek my fortune. Operating a service to gentlemen provided an opportunity to make money, and business has proved highly lucrative. Although I’m sure my late beloved husband would be shocked.”

  “You must have loved him very much.”

  With one hand, Mrs. Albert raised a delicate handkerchief to her eyes. “He meant the world to me and gave me so much.”

  Felicity tilted her head. Mrs. Albert exhibited no grief or tears for her long-lost love. No regret or bravery for having to carry on without him. Her expression settled into one of pure fulfillment. Perhaps Mrs. Albert had blamed him for how her life had turned out. She said he had died and left her destitute.

  The woman leaned toward Felicity. “You are quite exquisite, my dear.”

  Felicity’s cheeks flushed from the piercing scrutiny.

  “I suppose you hear that often. I don’t have to tell you how much of a burden beauty can be,” Mrs. Albert said.

  No other woman had ever mentioned this to her. Mrs. Albert seemed to have what the Hindus described as a third eye to see beyond what lay immediately in front of her. Yet Felicity wanted to keep the focus off her life. “You do make an excellent cup of tea. The best I have had in town. Although Dr. Lennox serves a close second. Ever met him?”

  “An odd man with private ways.”

  “Such as?”

  Mrs. Albert sipped tea and set down the cup. “I’m sure you have already heard the rumors about him.”

  Felicity shook her head.

  “The doctor has a reputation for not liking the company of women, including his own patients, but he spends a lot of time with the girls on Viceroy Street. And the fouler, the better, for him. When he visits, he always carries his black bag. One can only imagine what goes on behind those doors.”

  “Were Lily Rawlins and Mattie Morgan among the women he visited?”

  “I couldn’t say, but then, it is only a rumor.”

  “What’s your impression of Reverend Phoenix?”

  “Another strange man. His sermons sound more savage than saving.”

  “Yes, they do.”

  “One evening I dropped by his church with a donation and found him wiping blood from his hands.” She fluttered her eyes as if flirting.

  “When did this take place?” Felicity attempted to submerge her piqued interest.

  “Sometime earlier this spring. He told me he had just butchered a pig for his stew. Still, he appeared nervous, like I had caught him doing something not written in his Bible.” Mrs. Albert changed the subject. “And I’m very happy you like the tea. A British brand, which makes it the best.”

  Felicity rose. “I’ve taken up enough of your time.”

  Mrs. Albert walked her to the door. “Come and see me again, that is, unless you’re worried about scandal.”

  “Scandal is the least of my concerns.”

  “Good. There’s so much else to dread in the world.”

  On her way home, Felicity thought over the madam’s contradictions. Mrs. Albert had exhibited ladylike graciousness, yet the girl who interrupted them had exhibited fear of the woman, as well as bruises. The madam had attended the funeral of Mattie Morgan, but in the photograph Felicity had taken, Mrs. Albert wore a demure smile while passing the place where Mattie had been most brutally slain. She spoke with openness but clearly hid more than she said.

  Sheriff Tom Pike boasted that he could read people. But Felicity believed even he might have trouble with an accurate appraisal of Mrs. Albert.

  CHAPTER 18

  At five thirty that morning, Robert Lowery alerted Felicity to the news of another killing in the Red District. As she dressed, she kept thinking, Not again, not again. Not another life.

  But a new thought pushed into her head.

  Victim number three.

  By the time Felicity arrived at King General Mercantile, throngs of people had gathered around, chattering about the possible identify of the deceased.

  “Jess, get those people back over there. Marty, do the same on the other end of the street,” Pike called to his deputies. “Don’t want nobody closer than three hundred feet of this place.”

  Stretching out their arms, the deputies pushed back the people who had arrived for a glimpse of the body. Felicity put her head down with a smile. Pike had adopted one of her suggested investigative techniques, namely, maintaining the integrity of the crime scene.

  The sheriff spotted her and walked over. “She can come closer,” he told a deputy.

  Holding her satchel, she followed Pike. “Sheriff, why are you being so cooperative this morning?”

  “I sent a telegram to Scotland Yard asking about you.”

  “And?” She smiled inwardly, knowing this would vindicate her actions in Placer.

  “An inspector down there communicated back, to my surprise. He replied that you could be annoying, arrogant, and overbearing, but you had helped them capture several murderers.”

  She held her head higher. “Is that all?”

  “No. That I should at the very least listen to what you had to say.”

  While justice had been her reward in the other cases, the support of Scotland Yard amounted to the most pleasing bonus. But time for the business at hand.

  “What happened here, Sheriff?” Although he had invited her to call him Tom, she thought it most appropriate to address him by his title in front of others. This was something she also did with Jackson Davies. Her friend back home hadn’t said anything, but she suspected he appreciated the gesture.

  “The killer worked her over worse than the others,” Pike answered solemnly as they walked.

  “Her identity?”

  “Don’t know, but from her outfit, she’s a girl of the line, a prostitute.” He stopped so quickly she bumped into him. “You may not want to see this, Miss Carrol.” He probably didn’t want to call her by her first name in front of his deputies either.

  She held up her satchel. “After what I’ve told you, you must realize I can handle the sight of blood and mayhem.”

  “Doc Lennox is on a medical call outside of town, so he’ll examine the body later at Quigley’s. I left everything as we found it until you could make your inspection. The killer did leave something else behind this time besides a body.”

  “What?”

  “You can’t miss it.”

  Felicity lifted the blanket covering the body. The dead woman lay on her back, hands placed at her sides, her throat cut. The knife had also been whipped along both sides of the mouth, which gave the victim the ghastly appearance of laughing at her own funeral. With that and the odd placement of the woman’s head, the killer seemed to be taunting them. The mutilation to the victim’s face also reiterated the culprit’s warped war on the prostitutes. His determination to disfigure them in extreme ways. To punish them even more.

  The bottom half of the victim’s cheap green velvet dress had been lifted up and saturated with blood, as had the dirt around the body. As with the other victims, a clean incision had been made in the girl’s abdomen. The deceased’s eyes were open as if calling to Felicity to find out who had done this.

  Listen to her.

  From the satchel, Felicity removed a magnifying glass and inspected the victim’s clothing. No red hairs as had been on Mattie Morgan’s clothing, but she spotted long curly black hairs that probably belonged to the victim. Clutched
in the right hand, however, were several strands of shorter wavy red hair. The woman must have grabbed at the assailant trying to free herself, Felicity deduced as she took samples.

  The victim’s left hand held a beaded purse. Using her pen, Felicity inspected the contents and counted six gold pieces. She covered the body with the blanket.

  Felicity lifted her head and focused on what had been painted on the wall about forty inches above the body.

  “You read Chinese?” Pike had crouched down to look at the symbols.

  “I speak four other languages, but sadly that’s not one of them. I have studied Chinese history, but unfortunately, I can’t translate this.”

  She touched one of the black grainy letters and smelled her fingers. “This isn’t chalk.” After scraping a sample of the material into an envelope, she drew the Chinese symbols in her notebook. Then she fetched her camera from the wagon and took photographs of the body and the symbols left by the killer.

  “This is quite extraordinary. After the murder of Catherine Eddowes in Whitechapel, police found a piece of her bloodstained clothing nearby. On a wall above it was written, ‘The Jews are the men that will not be blamed for nothing,’” Felicity recited from memory.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Who can say for sure? But we know this murderer is cunning. In Whitechapel, I believe Jack the Ripper attempted to shift blame for his crimes to Jewish people. So this”—she pointed to the Chinese symbols—“may be another distraction.”

  “And in Placer, he tried to place his ugly deed at the feet of the Chinese. He’s playing games with us.”

  “Perhaps.” She looked up past the blood spatters. Above the body was a second-story window.

  “That’s the bedroom of the people who run the store. They slept through the murder,” Pike said.

  “May I speak with the person who found the body?”

  He motioned for her to follow him inside the store.

  In the back room, a thick-waisted woman with dark-brown hair and glasses sat on a chair, colorless as a napkin. Standing next to her was a thin, pallid man, also wearing glasses. She held his hand. The woman’s teeth rattled and she trembled.

  Pike kneeled down. “Mrs. King, this woman is a writer all the way from England. Can you please tell her what you told me?” His voice was calming.

  Mrs. King’s nod was almost imperceptible. She breathed in a copious amount of air. “I rise each morning at four thirty to enjoy a cup of coffee. Such a tranquil time before my husband and son wake and business picks up from the men heading home or going to work at the smelters and mines.”

  Her eyes darted to the front of the store. “I started a fire in the stove and put on the coffeepot. As is my habit, I sweep off the long wooden porch while waiting for the coffee to brew. Passing wagons and horses usually kick up a thick layer of dust. You know that, Sheriff.”

  “I do,” Pike said.

  “Many times I have to shoo away drunkards who fall asleep on the benches in front of the store. This morning as I swept, I noticed a red footprint at the end of the porch nearest the alley. So I walk around the building. A woman lay on the ground near the store’s brick wall. I think it’s just another drunk and I tell her, ‘Hey, you. Wake up and go home.’”

  The largest of tears skimmed down Mrs. King’s ample cheeks. Felicity touched her hand and handed her a handkerchief from her pocket.

  “The woman didn’t move, so I walked closer.” Her mouth shuddered. “Blood spread outward from the woman’s body as if she had sprouted red wings. I screamed and fainted away.”

  “The sheriff said you heard nothing the previous night,” Felicity said.

  “I wake at the sound of a mouse scurrying over the floor, but I didn’t hear anything last night. That poor girl was killed right under our window.” Her eyes fluttered and she swooned. Her husband caught her and fanned her face with a piece of white cloth.

  “I have a few more questions,” Felicity said, and was sure Pike was not approving.

  The woman took in more air. “Go ahead.”

  “Did you or Mr. King know the victim? Had she come in the store?”

  Mrs. King shook her head.

  “I recognized her but didn’t know her name,” the husband said.

  She asked about whether they had also seen a man in the black coat dressed as a gentleman. The shopkeepers hadn’t.

  Mrs. King cleaned her glasses on her apron. “Since our store is on the northern border of the shameful Red District, the prostitutes and other scoundrels frequenting the place do come in here to buy their necessities. They’re good customers and don’t ask for credit, but I don’t dare admit that to the other members of the Methodist Ladies’ League.” She put the glasses back on.

  “I suspect Mrs. King will have nightmares about this for a long time,” Felicity said when she and Pike left the store. “Now I’d like a closer look at the bloody footprint on the porch.”

  Felicity took a measuring tape from her satchel. The print was a touch over ten inches in length. Thin sole. She looked at Pike’s cowboy boots. The shoe had not been tapered. Not a boot. A dress shoe. She took a photograph.

  “I’d like a copy of that,” Pike requested. He then summoned one of his deputies. “We got to get rid of the Chinese symbols on the wall.” He directed him to fetch water and a brush from the store.

  “Why?” Felicity said.

  “They’ll cause grumbling among the townsfolk, and I don’t need additional aggravation right now.”

  “Such as?”

  Someone yelled behind them.

  “A damn Chinaman did this,” called a man with a deputy’s badge. His undersized head mismatched the rest of his body, which boasted a massive chest and arms. His wide-set piggish eyes contracted. “We should have run the Chinese out of Placer years ago. These murders are some heathen rite.”

  “That kind,” Pike told Felicity.

  Others in the crowd hollered, “Damn Chinamen!”

  “Heathens!”

  “Run them out on a rail!”

  Newspaperman Clark Andrews scribbled hard. Pike frowned.

  “Damn. News of the Chinese symbols will be in the Gazette this afternoon,” the sheriff said to Felicity. “We’ll move the body to the funeral home as soon as the wagon gets here.”

  “Who’s the instigator, Sheriff?” Felicity said.

  “Marty Smith. Regrettably, he’s one of my deputies.” He motioned Smith over. “Marty, shut your mouth and quit stirring up the people. Hurry the wagon so we can get the body out of here.” The other deputy arrived with water, and Pike had him clean away the symbols.

  Smith spit. “You’re destroying evidence a Chinaman killed that woman.”

  “I said get the wagon!”

  Red-faced, the deputy hustled away.

  “Killers!” some of the onlookers bellowed. “Foreigners!”

  Pike strode over to the grumbling crowd. “Everybody go about your business. Give this dead woman some respect. Shoo now.”

  With loud complaints, the crowd began to break up. Felicity respected Pike’s handling of the difficult situation. A wagon rolled up. Pike and an older deputy wrapped the body in a blanket. As they placed it in the back, a young boy with a face sparkling from perspiration sped up to them.

  “Sheriff Pike, Sheriff Pike.”

  “Kind of busy here, Luke.”

  “Somebody left a package for you at the jail.” The boy bent over to catch his breath.

  “Be there soon as I finish here.”

  The boy wiped the sweat off with his shirt sleeve. “Caleb said you better come quick pronto. There’s blood on the parcel.”

  “Frank, finish up here.” Pike darted to his horse and sped off.

  With all speed, Felicity gathered her equipment and drove her wagon to the courthouse. At Pike’s office, she made her way around four deputies looking down at his desk. On it sat a shiny black wooden box atop a crumpled page from the Gazette. Smears of blood dotted the newspaper
. On the box lay a human heart, which had been washed clean. Felicity took a closer view. The deputies did not move.

  Pike held a note in his hand. “This was folded up inside the box.”

  “May I?” Felicity used tweezers to hold the paper.

  I leave you the rest of her hart. It tasted of sin. I do enjoy your litle town. I want to stay as long as I can or at lest while the hunting is good. My ink is running dry. I need to plenish my supply. I am a forever poet of blood.

  Dearest regard,

  Your friend

  In the light of the window, she peered at the note with her magnifying glass and placed the paper near her nose. “The killer wrote this in blood.”

  Everyone in the room stared at her.

  Pike stood and glared at his deputies. “What the hell are you standing around for? Find this damn killer. Talk to every person in the Red District if you have to, look under every rock and in every doorway, but don’t come back here without something. Caleb, you stay.”

  The deputies rumbled out except for an older deputy with a round gut over his belt.

  “Caleb, who left this at the office?” Pike said.

  The deputy shook his head. “Found it on the counter after I got back from the outhouse.”

  “Get back to work.”

  Felicity’s attention remained on the box.

  “That’s not the worst.” Pike moved the heart around.

  She leaned in. A part of the organ had been torn away. “Teeth marks.”

  Pike sank back in his chair.

  “Now do you believe, Tom?” Felicity said. They were alone in his office.

  “Let’s say you might not have to persuade me much longer.”

  “What a relief. Convincing you was like trying to cross the Atlantic in a paper boat.”

  “The what with a what?”

  “Never mind. Look at this.” With care, she spread out the newspaper. The torn-out front page carried the story about Mattie Morgan’s killing.

  “He does favor theatrics,” Pike said, as if tasting something bitter.

  “May I make a closer inspection of the note, the newspaper, and the other thing at my laboratory?” She pointed at the heart.