Felicity Carrol and the Murderous Menace

by Patricia Marcantonio

  Scrambling from under the bed, she clipped her thigh on the wooden post and mentally cursed at the pain. She noted that Lennox had taken his doctor’s bag from the top of the chest. Making her way to the medical cabinet, she opened the drawer. One of the catlin knives was missing.

  Rushing out the back door, Felicity ran to her horse and rode until she spotted Lennox’s slower-moving carriage going around the street corner. She gave enough distance between them that he didn’t notice her pursuit, aided by the dusky evening that had come to Placer. After a few turns, she knew his destination.

  The Red District.

  With leisure, the doctor drove onto Viceroy Street and stopped his carriage a short distance from a set of cribs. Felicity let the reins relax in her hands. Good, Lennox had passed the doors of Beth Ray and Nellie Smith up the street. After checking in both directions, the doctor knocked and entered one of the shacks. The name JO had been painted over the door in a fancy script. He carried his doctor’s bag and wore gray gloves.

  Getting off her horse, Felicity hid across the street in an alley between a gambling house and a cheap hotel. She rebuked her rashness. She had no weapon if attacked or to subdue the doctor if he was set to kill again. No crossbow or even that little pistol.

  Her mind sped to the story of how the Persian army had attacked the mighty Greeks in 401 BC. They had used slings.

  She ripped a long strip of fabric from the bottom of her petticoat. Biting each end, she quickly braided the fabric, forming a cradle in the middle. From the ground, she chose two egg-sized stones worthy of David knocking down Goliath.

  She glanced at her watch. The doctor had been inside the shack for five minutes. Making sure she had no witnesses, Felicity ran to the other side of the dark street and put her ear against the door. A murmur of voices, but no sounds of a struggle. She couldn’t give in to indecision. She had to save the woman inside. Felicity hurled one of the rocks at the door and dashed back to the safety of the unlit alley across the street.

  A curvy blonde woman in a tired corset and gray skirt opened the door. Seeing no one there, she closed it, but not before tossing a curse to the unknown person.

  “Thank goodness,” Felicity whispered from her place of concealment.

  After another few minutes, the doctor walked to his carriage as if on a summer eve’s constitutional. Blood didn’t saturate his gloves. Felicity knotted her hands in puzzlement. Lennox boarded his carriage and rode off. Someone had probably spotted him entering the prostitute’s room, so he couldn’t harm the woman. That had to be the answer.

  Footsteps crunched the gravel behind Felicity. She twisted about.

  “Howdy,” a voice boomed from the shadows behind her in the alley. The silhouette of a man with a rounded belly entered the dim light a few feet from where she stood. His calling card was a pungent mix of whiskey and sweat. “How much do you cost?”

  “You’re very mistaken and very odious,” Felicity said. Behind her back, she placed the remaining stone in the fabric sling and backed up into the street.

  “Come here and give me a taste.” The man breathed through his nose. A dreadful noise.

  Felicity continued toward her horse tied to a post near the alley. The man lumbered closer. His feral eyes skimmed her body.

  “I’ll pay you good.”

  “Please leave me alone, or I’ll be forced to injure you.” Felicity twirled the sling in her right hand.

  With a base laugh, he ambled toward her.

  “I warn you. I’ll use this weapon.”

  “I’ll take you right here on the street and save my money.” He hurried as best he could in his drunken state.

  Her right arm made a swift rotation in an overhand throw; she stepped forward and released the projectile. The stone smacked the man in the middle of his chest. With a grunt, he fell back like a chopped tree. Felicity rushed to him and kicked his foot. He wriggled in pain and moaned.

  “Good, you’re alive.” She rushed to her horse.

  CHAPTER 23

  Sheriff Tom Pike smiled when he saw Felicity ride up to the courthouse, but then shook his head. Her expression must have told him this was more than a pleasant visit.

  “I followed William Lennox to Viceroy Street tonight. There he entered the shack of a prostitute named Jo. Please check on her, Tom. I believe she’s safe, but she may have information about the doctor. I couldn’t get over there myself because a big man accosted me in an alley.” The words emerged in a torrent.

  “What big man? What the hell are you talking about, and why were you spying on the doctor?”

  “We can discuss that later. We must hurry.” She jumped on her horse, and he followed. She suspected the only reason he did was to placate her.

  In the Red District, they stopped in front of Jo’s shack. Felicity breathed relief. The big smelly man had picked himself up from the place where she had knocked him over. She’d save the story about how she had smashed him in the chest with a rock for another time. Pike’s face edged on anger, most probably at her.

  The sheriff pounded on Jo’s door. As he prepared to give it a kick, the woman opened up. She still wore a gray skirt but had removed the corset. Her tremendous breasts made Felicity’s cheeks flush.

  “Who’s next?” The woman could have been helping a customer at a store. She wore lewdness like a hat. “Why, Sheriff Pike. I’ve seen you around town. I hoped you’d come visit me. I’ll even give you a good price, the one I save for our city officials.” Up close the woman appeared to be in her thirties.

  Jo peeked around him to see Felicity standing there. “Hold on. Is she with the women’s league to run us out of town?”

  “This is law business. Let us in,” Pike said.

  “Entre vous.” Jo had a husky voice. “That’s how they say it in Paris, or so I read on a bottle of toilet water.”

  The woman was safe, so Felicity forgave her misuse of French.

  “Put some clothes on,” Pike said as they entered. The room gave off a briny smell.

  “Suit yourself.” Jo donned a lacy red robe, which didn’t do much to conceal her body. She sat on the rumpled bed. “Who’s the gal?”

  “I thought you were in danger,” Felicity said.

  “Aren’t you an angel of mercy.” Mockery dominated Jo’s voice.

  “You know Dr. Lennox?” the sheriff asked.

  “Who?” Jo’s blue eyes went up to the ceiling.

  “A well-dressed man with red hair and beard,” Felicity answered.

  “Don’t know nobody like that.”

  “Jo, you’re lying to me.” Pike lit a cigar for himself and the cigarette Jo had placed in her mouth.

  “Oh, him.” The woman worried the ground as she spoke.

  “What’d he want?” Pike said.

  “What every man wants who knocks on my door.” Jo’s legs slid open. Her black-lined eyes glistened and concentrated on Felicity’s face as if to test her.

  “Jo, I don’t hear nothing like the truth coming out of your painted lips,” Pike said.

  “That’s the naked truth. I’d swear on my father’s grave, if I knew where it was.” Her eyes shot back to the floor.

  “Did Dr. Lennox hurt or threaten you?” Felicity said, and she could feel Pike’s exasperation at her interference.

  Jo dared to grin. “Miss, he didn’t get nothing he didn’t pay for.”

  “We’ll protect you if he did threaten you in any way,” Pike said.

  “Oh, I’m sure. Now ’scuse me, Sheriff. Men will be knocking on my door with more than questions.”

  Pike said nothing as he and Felicity returned to the now dark courthouse. The place had electric lights, and he lit up his office. He sat behind his desk and motioned for Felicity to sit across from him.

  His silence infuriated her, but she placed her hands on her lap. A flare of temper wouldn’t help make her case against the doctor. “That woman was clearly lying.”

  “You’re right.”

  She hadn’t anticipated
his consensus. She straightened. “Then arrest him.”

  “Tell me why, dammit.”

  Felicity reported what she had seen at Lennox’s office. She didn’t mention the difference in size between the doctor’s shoes and the print at the crime scene at the King store. The other evidence overpowered the point.

  “That’s all you got?” His tone stiffened with doubt.

  What was it about police officers and only wanting a certain kind of evidence? “You’re being intolerably stubborn, Tom. Have you forgotten about the knives in his surgery? They’re exactly the kind used in the murders.”

  “He’s a doctor. He has knives.”

  “Then ask him his whereabouts on the nights of the murders. See if he can come up with witnesses.”

  “I hear no good reason to even ask those questions.” His antagonism surfaced. “And I should run you in for breaking into the man’s house.”

  “Under Montana law, a person who suspects another person of malfeasance can take whatever means possible to bring the person to justice.”

  “Where’d you read that?”

  “In the law books at my house.”

  He walked around the desk. “You don’t carry a badge, Miss Felicity Carrol. You’re a rich girl from England with a grudge. You’re putting too much weight on science and not enough on people. What’s under a man’s skin ain’t found with your microscope and in your books. Dr. Lennox is no killer, and that’s how I read it until you convince me otherwise.”

  The way he talked, they were strangers again. Not two people who had shared ardent kisses the previous night. If she had allowed emotion to lead, she might have been hurt. But she hadn’t. Still, her whole body clenched because he had snubbed her facts. She’d had this same disagreement on her earliest investigation with Inspector Jackson Davies.

  “We have evidence, Sheriff.” Her voice held resolve.

  “If we take your so-called evidence to a judge, he’ll throw it out and you and me with it.” He slapped his hands on the desk.

  She sputtered with vexation at his attitude and the prospect that she would forever be having this constant fight with lawmen. A few tears escaped. Not bothering with her handkerchief, she roughly wiped at the tears with the back of her hands. “I’ve not wept like this since my pony Maurice died. I hate when females do nothing better than shed tears.”

  “Face up to it. The trail’s dried out. That’s why you’re really crying. You can see how dangerous this is becoming.” Pike took a white handkerchief from his vest pocket and dabbed at her cheeks. “I didn’t mean to be so rough.”

  She sat up and blew her nose. “I’m sorry for not uncovering enough evidence to suit you.”

  His head went into his hands. “Felicity, you are giving me a gut ache.”

  * * *

  At Pauper Grounds, Rose Johnson went into the ground with two witnesses standing by. Reverend Phoenix seemed to be performing for Felicity and the gravedigger alone, the latter of whom chewed tobacco and leaned on his shovel.

  With one hand, Phoenix raised a Bible upward. With the other, he beat on his chest. “Rose Johnson could be counted as another whore of Babylon, but we’re all sinners unless we do your good work. We must strive to live without iniquity, or else our immortal spirits will fall down into the bottomless pit. Amen.”

  The gravedigger, a runt with skin the same color as the ground in which he worked, started filling in the hole. Felicity threw in a handful of dirt. Dust to dust. The gravedigger might as well have been burying all her expectations to convict William Lennox. The scrapings from the tip of his pen had been just dried ink. Not enough proof to bring Lennox to justice.

  “Nice to see you again, Miss Carrol, even if it’s at the bone garden,” Phoenix said.

  She detested his almost vindictive send-off of these murdered women, but he did at least care enough to appear at their graves. Mr. Quigley the undertaker had told her no other clergyman would say the holy words over the bodies of prostitutes, murdered or otherwise.

  “Since you minister to the women in the Red District, Reverend Phoenix, I trust you’ll warn them about this maniacal killer roaming the streets. They must use all caution.”

  “The church is open day and night, so they can run there if they are in danger.”

  “I do feel I’m battling something I cannot win.” She hadn’t meant to sound so dispirited or confide in the calf-killing crazy man. “I’m talking about my writing, of course,” she added.

  “Trouble and obstacles await anyone who challenges the Beast. He is quicker, smarter, and more enticing than any angel of God.”

  “I didn’t mention the devil, Reverend.” But she was in fact tracking evil.

  “As my mother used to say before she drank herself to an early grave, you don’t have to seek out the devil. He waits for you.” He tipped his wide-brimmed hat and got on his horse.

  The gravedigger whistled as he shoveled earth onto the wooden box. The clumps broke on the cheap coffin. Thump, thump, thump. The branches of nearby aspens quaked in the breeze like the wings of insects.

  Felicity pictured Beth Ray and Nellie Smith in the ground. Each in cheap coffins, their ashen bodies disfigured by a knife, their clothes knitted with blood.

  She hurried to her wagon and drove toward the Red District.

  * * *

  When Beth Ray answered the door, she didn’t wear the red lips or rouge of a prostitute. She could have been a young girl coming in from a country day, rosy-cheeked from sunshine on a tranquil pasture. Her tawny hair was in a braid, tied with a white ribbon. She wore a pink gingham dress and clean apron.

  “Hello, Beth. I’m sorry to visit unannounced, but I wanted to talk with you and Nellie,” Felicity said.

  Beth glanced up the street. “What if someone sees you here, Miss Felicity? You shouldn’t be here. You’re a lady.”

  “I’m also your friend, I hope. May I come in?”

  Given the unpainted wooden walls and marred floor, the word drab was insufficient for the room. A splintered chest and rocker sat in one corner. In another corner stood a potbelly stove with a pile of wood on one side. In back of the main room lay a kitchen, which held a small table with two chairs. Still, the floor had been swept, and the open window brought in fresh air. A quilt with flower designs covered the bed.

  “I brought you these.” Felicity handed Beth a bunch of roses she had stopped to pick from the front of her house on Bullion Boulevard. Felicity had placed the flowers in a ceramic vase she’d found on a shelf in the library.

  “How pretty, and they smell good.” Beth could have been a child receiving a toy. She placed the vase on the chest of drawers. “Brightens up this old room.”

  “Flowers have that power.”

  “Try the rocker, Miss. It’s not too uncomfortable.”

  Felicity didn’t sit. “Another woman has been murdered.”

  “I know. The news traveled through the Red District like a wildfire in summer. I guess she didn’t live too far away from me. Another girl of the line. The killer’s got something against us.”

  “I’m worried about you and Nellie.”

  “Don’t have to worry about her. Nellie pulled up stakes as soon as she heard about the latest killing. She didn’t like this town anymore ’cause of all the girls being attacked. She said she never had much luck in her life so she’d probably end up like them.”

  “I’m glad she left for her own safety.” From her purse, Felicity pulled out four fifty-dollar bank notes and held them out to Beth. “Please take these. You can go to another town. You can make a new start someplace else, someplace safer.”

  Dimples set in Beth’s cheeks, but she didn’t take the money. “You’re the first person who’s treated me nice in many, many years.” She sat on the bed that squeaked. “Always wanted to go to California. Even the name sounds of paradise. A place with no winters. Fruit on trees growing all year round. A chance to dip myself in the warm waters of the ocean. ’Least that’s what a miner told me o
ne night. He wanted me to go with him.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because it was the throwaway talk of men after they lay with you.”

  Felicity sat on the rocker. “Beth, how did you end up here?” Her knowledge came from books, and this young woman’s resulted from the life she had lived. Felicity needed to know more than what had been written on a page.

  “My daddy was a bad, bad man. He beat all of us children and my mother almost every day for years. We suffered something terrible at his hands. He was mad at life and took it out on us.”

  “I’m sorry.” Here was another girl who had experienced injury at the hands of a parent. Felicity, however, showed no bruises from her father’s neglect, not outwardly.

  Beth smiled. “I endured by closing my eyes and making up stories about traveling to foreign places. I’d dream of marrying a rich king who’d order my pa torn to pieces by voracious dogs. Or that Indians would capture, torture, and scalp him.”

  Felicity was surprised at the violence, but perhaps that was what Beth’s father had encouraged with his own. “What happened?”

  “The day before I turned sixteen, I cooked up chicken soup. Me and my pa were alone. To the pot, I added two handfuls of flypaper to percolate the poison in them. I served him up a big bowl. After the second helping, he died. I stole one of the family horses and lit out.”

  Beth continued as if telling a story about someone else. “With no prospects, I became a soiled dove. For someone with no education, I make money. As important, I control the men who want to pay for me. If I don’t like their faces, I close the door on them.” She gazed at Felicity, waiting for a response. “Never told that to anyone.”

  Felicity’s sense of justice teetered on the edge of a sword. Should Beth be arrested, or had she carried out a sentence on a man who deserved it? At that point Felicity couldn’t say.

  “You’re not condemning me, are you, Miss?”