“No,” he said aloud, fingers digging into his shaved scalp. “I don’t believe I killed Hiram Sloane, by intention or by accident.”
You don’t want to believe you killed Hiram. There is a difference.
“No. Stop. Stop talking!” He raged against the whisper in his spirit, and the pain in his head swelled double. But he knew the whisper was his conscience, and silencing it might prove even worse a fate.
Keys jangled, then scraped the lock, and the door whined open. The two attendants had returned along with a psychiatrist Stephen had seen before. He had prominent brown eyes set into a fleshy face that suggested a fondness for food and drink. By the grooves carved between nose and chin and the hairline retreating from his brow, Stephen judged him to be at least a decade older than himself.
“Well, now.” Dr. Franklin unwound his stethoscope from his neck. “Who were you shouting at? Hearing voices?”
Stephen stood. “What? No. I mean, yes, but it was only inside my head.”
“So you didn’t see anyone else in your room with you before the three of us arrived?”
“No, of course not.” The delusion of blood on his hands had been easily managed.
The stethoscope pressed against his chest, metal cold even through his linen shirt. Holding his breath, he tried to slow his pulse.
Dr. Franklin frowned, gaze traveling over Stephen’s head and down to his shaking hands tapping his legs. Stephen went to hide them in his pockets and found his trousers had none. The stethoscope moved to his back, a cold spot of pressure beside his spine. Light-headed, Stephen exhaled.
The psychiatrist draped his stethoscope around his neck again. “Your heart rate is dangerously fast.”
He stood close enough for Stephen to count the pores on his nose. Feeling like he might suffocate, Stephen stepped back, stumbling against the cot before righting himself.
“Are you aware of how much you’re perspiring? Have you exerted yourself in the last few minutes?”
“Exerted?” With the cuff of his sleeve, Stephen mopped his brow. “I paced some.”
“We heard you shouting,” Linden said.
“That too,” Stephen admitted. “But I hardly think that qualifies as exercise.”
Dr. Franklin held up a finger and told Stephen to follow its side-to-side movement with his eyes. That complete, he made a note in a file. “Pupils unevenly dilated,” he murmured. “Your fevered mind has affected your entire body. The perspiration, the shaking, the voices in your head . . . we must treat it quickly.”
“What kind of treatment?”
“Slattery and Linden will see to it. Cooperate with them for your own good. Gentlemen.” Dr. Franklin nodded to the attendants and took his leave.
Flanking Stephen, the men gripped his arms and propelled him out of the cell, down the corridor, and into a room lined with tiles. Inside was a claw-foot tub full of water and ice.
“You’re going to spend some time in the tub, enough to stop your shaking,” Linden told him.
“That tub is full of ice!” Stephen protested. A chill came off the water and drifted toward him.
“Drink this. It will make it easier, trust me.” Slattery squeezed Stephen’s jaw open and poured a dose of laudanum into his mouth.
Swallowing and sputtering, Stephen was helpless to stop the men from stripping him of his clothing. Humiliated, he closed his eyes to his own nakedness. Almost before he’d had time to register that the attendants had picked him up, he was plunged into the bath and gasping at the shock of it.
Cold knifed through him and stole his breath. Frantic to escape, he pushed himself up only to be shoved down again by four strong hands. There they held him, by the shoulders and knees, to keep his body underwater. Stephen thrashed, desperate, and they cursed at being splashed.
“Stay down!” Slattery shouted.
Teeth chattering, Stephen shuddered violently, and his muscles cramped. Cold consumed him, replacing every fiber in his being until he could believe he was not just drowning in ice but made of it. Even his thoughts were slowing, freezing along with the rest of him.
“P-p-please,” he managed to stutter. “L-let . . . m-me . . . out!”
“Doctor’s orders,” said Linden. “You’ll be numb in a moment, and then it won’t matter anyway. A little longer, and you may even feel warm.”
He’d never had an ice bath in Georgia. But he knew what it was to be unmanned, and this was it. With Herculean effort, he struggled up, away from the needles that pinned him all over.
“I said, stay down!”
A force to his skull, an explosion of pain where his head hit the rim of the tub, and Stephen knew no more.
Nate Pierce stormed into his editor’s office in their new three-story building at No. 15 Canal Street and slammed a newspaper on the desk, pointing to the headline. Alleged War Hero Arrested for Murder of Fellow Veteran.
“Has Stephen Townsend gone to trial and been convicted already? Because if he hasn’t, the word alleged has been misplaced. It’s the murder that is alleged, is it not?”
City Editor Joseph Medill leaned back in his chair and skewered Nate with his gaze. “A mistake by the copy editor, no doubt.” He did not seem overly concerned.
On his blotter lay yesterday’s paper. Personal notices bordered the pages, printed free of charge to all who sent them in. Tommy Jackson, 10 years old, missing: information to be sent to Centenary Church. Henry Leary is at First Congregational Church. Mrs. Brown and four children missing. Information to be sent to First Congregational Church. Within that frame of found and missing persons was a twelve-column story headlined Destruction of Chicago! But only a third of the city had been razed.
Nate mastered himself. “I’ve interviewed both the suspect and the victim. Why was this not given to me to cover?” He hadn’t even heard about it until he saw the story in the newspaper that morning.
Outside the window, Canal Street teemed with wagons and men scrambling to secure temporary offices. Broadsides pinned to trees told the homeless where to find food and shelter. A train chugged parallel to the south branch of the Chicago River. When it had passed, the sound of digging and scraping could be heard from a few blocks away as work crews cleared away rubble.
“I’d think it obvious, Pierce.” Medill clipped the end of a cigar and lit it. “According to that letter we received, your reporting on Townsend was short-sighted and sentimental. That’s not what this paper is about. Add to that the fact that you spent the night of the fire with the man’s daughters when you could have been gathering news on the greatest calamity of the age—”
“I was gathering news at the same time, and my stories prove it,” Nate seethed, pushing his glasses up his nose. “What other Tribune reporter made it as far as Lincoln Park to write about the masses huddled there?”
“Answer this.” Medill put the cigar to his lips and inhaled before releasing curls of blue-grey smoke along with his words. “Why wasn’t Stephen Townsend the one ushering his daughters to safety?”
The sweet tang of tobacco cloyed the room. Nate paced to the window and peered east, over the throng in the street and across the river, grasping for a response that would suit. Stuffing his fist into his trouser pocket, he fingered the embossed front and back of the dime that would pay for a loaf of bread after work. So, too, he held in his mind two sides of Stephen Townsend. One version fed stray dogs blackberry pie, and the other version had aimed his revolver at Nate, eyes wild and unseeing. Both pictures were true. It was unsettling.
And yet there had to be more to the story than this.
He spun to face his editor. “Who says the murder was not the doing of vandals taking advantage of the lawlessness created by the fire? Did the police consider that?”
“You forget yourself, Mr. Pierce. We are in the business of printing the news, not putting defendants on trial and judging for ourselves their guilt or innocence. But if it will give me peace from your incessant defiance—yes, the police considered it. The reporter d
idn’t include that in the article because the possibility was quickly eliminated by the eyewitness accounts and the murder weapon bearing the initials of the accused. Paper is in short supply, if you hadn’t noticed. We don’t waste space writing about what didn’t happen.” He tapped the cigar over a glass dish, then puffed on it.
Nate couldn’t deny that on the night of the fire, Stephen had been truly incapacitated by his affliction of mind and spirit. He’d pulled a gun on Nate, but would he have done the same to a friend he’d known for decades?
“I would like to read the full statements of the witnesses,” he said. Perhaps even conduct fresh interviews himself.
“Pointless. The article’s been published. There’s nothing more to say on the matter.” Tendrils of smoke scented the air between them.
“I disagree,” Nate insisted. “A man’s life is at stake, not to mention the fate of his daughters, who have been orphaned by Townsend’s arrest.” He had no idea how they were faring or where they’d landed. He’d found a two-room flat to rent near Canal Street at twenty-five dollars a month, a painful hike from the twelve he’d paid before the fire. He wasn’t sure if Meg and Sylvie could afford such lodgings, or if they had sought refuge with relatives, or if they remained among the homeless.
Medill splayed his hands on his desk and stood. “We are newsmen living in a city the entire world wants to hear about. They want big stories of water shortages and the homeless, of destruction and reconstruction, of rebuilding bigger and better. They want stories of a phoenix rising from the ashes. We’re learning more about other fires that occurred the same time as ours. The fire that wiped out Peshtigo, Wisconsin, took with it between eight hundred and twelve hundred souls. Holland and Manistee, Michigan, were destroyed too, but with a death toll much lower. What do you hope to gain by digging into the little story of one man?”
Nate tugged at his collar to loosen it. “I would not have a man smeared and ruined on account of careless reporting.”
Mr. Medill stared at him for so long that Nate wondered if the editor was actually considering what he’d said. Then he rubbed the weariness from his face. “You’ve gone soft, Pierce. I’ve half a mind to put you on the society columns or the mail room. Everyone here knows you have a guilt complex over not fighting in the war. You deify those who served. Perhaps I erred in indulging you, allowing you to spend so much time on the puff series about Chicago’s veterans.”
Turning to hide the heat mounting in his face, Nate crossed to the table near the wall and poured himself a glass of water from the decanter. He stopped drinking when he tasted smoke and fish.
“Get over it!” Medill bellowed, pounding his fist on the desk. “Facts, man! We want facts, not fairy tales.”
“Facts,” Nate repeated coldly. “I wonder if the reporter who blamed Catherine O’Leary’s cow for starting the fire is as zealous for facts as you are. You know as well as I do that Mrs. O’Leary hasn’t allowed a single interview with the press. No one knows her side of the story.”
“Seems to me you weren’t always so keen to get both sides, yourself.”
The arrow hit its mark. Suddenly Nate was the desperate eighteen-year-old who had cut corners investigating a story he’d written on speculation, a story he hoped would earn him a permanent position on staff. It had worked. He wasn’t proud of it. Wearing a donated jacket today that was too long in the sleeves—his own wardrobe lost to the fire—made him feel even more like a youth pretending to be a professional.
But that was wrong thinking. He’d been young when he started in this business, but he’d clocked more than a decade since then. He was older and wiser. Disillusioned. Just now, he didn’t mind if his countenance showed it.
Medill threw his arm wide to point with the end of his cigar toward the burned district. “There are a thousand other stories worth reporting out there without revisiting what’s already been done. Leave O’Leary and Townsend alone and move on. If I so much as catch a whiff of you snooping around when you should be covering other beats, you’ll be out of a job. And that’s final. Do I make myself clear?”
Nate set his tumbler of grey-tinged liquid on his editor’s desk. “Clear as water.” Without waiting for Medill’s reaction, he left.
Chapter Ten
With hands that still felt as though they were burning, Meg stood on the front porch of Hiram Sloane’s house and waited while Sylvie gathered her nerve. “It’s time,” she said as gently as she could manage through her pain.
Twenty hours after their father’s arrest, Sylvie had agreed to face Jasper Davenport, if he was still here, and whatever staff remained. Having no place to store their belongings, she and Sylvie had brought their tattered pillowcases. They had combed their hair but had few pins to hold it, and had had no chance to bathe since last Saturday.
Neither had they had much rest at the church last night, despite how much Meg had longed for sleep to dim her pain and carry her away. Damp stone had pressed her hip and ribs, her elbow had been her pillow, and a thin blanket brought little warmth. Babies wailed, children cried out with nightmares forged in flames. Sylvie gasped awake more than once, disoriented and trembling with cold or fear. Who among them, when they closed their eyes, did not see that terrible orange glow or smell the smoke or hear the bells of alarm? This morning Meg rose no less distraught over her father, and stiff and slow from lack of sleep besides.
Exhaling, Sylvie lifted the brass knocker and brought it down three times. Meg shifted her gaze to the movement of blue uniforms in the street. Two entire companies of General Sheridan’s militiamen were stationed here to guard the few square blocks of the Prairie Avenue neighborhood. Compared to the five companies assigned to protect the below-ground safes throughout the business district, this street felt especially thick with soldiers.
A click sounded on the other side of the door. It opened slowly, then flung wide as Helene Dressler gathered Meg and Sylvie into an embrace that smelled of lilac talc.
“Girls!” she cried, releasing them. “You must forgive such an emotional display, but I’ve been so worried. Oh! Your hands, Miss Margaret—will you fully recover?”
It was so different from the reception Meg had expected that her throat stung with relief and gratitude. “I fully intend to.”
With a flutter, Helene pulled them into the vestibule and locked the door behind them before drawing them into the main hall.
“Helene.” Sylvie twisted her fingers together, her complexion a match for the alabaster statues of Greek goddesses flanking the grand staircase. “We’re terribly sorry about Hiram. We cannot tell you how much. We’re still so shocked by the news, it hardly seems possible that it’s true.”
Helene’s eyes misted as she smoothed the black apron over her black skirt. “I never heard him leave. I don’t know what happened.”
Meg swallowed a knot of unshed tears. “We don’t know what happened either. The police arrested our father. . . .” She trailed off. Of course Helene already knew this. All of Chicago knew it, at least those who read the Tribune. “But I don’t believe for a moment he did this. Do you know of anyone else who would have wanted to harm Hiram?”
Helene spread her hands in a gesture of helplessness. “He’s kept to himself for the most part since his mind began failing him. The only person I’ve ever known to wish Master Hiram ill was Otto Schneider, but that was years ago.”
Meg nodded. It did not seem likely that a grievance as old as the war would resurface now without some kind of provocation.
“Will there be a funeral?” Sylvie asked. “Or have we missed it?”
“Mr. Davenport held a private burial service.” Helene’s voice contained her sorrow. “I suppose he hadn’t the means for more. But please come in, you poor souls. You’ve been through hell and back again.”
They followed her into the parlor, where polished woodwork bordered settees and chairs upholstered in ocher and crimson. Thick velvet draperies puddled on the floor. From an alcove between the windows, a bust of
Robert Burns, Hiram’s favorite poet, stared out at them.
Helene eyed the bundles Sylvie carried. “This is what remains?”
Meg said it was and eased into an armchair for the first time since before the fire. It would have been easier to leave everything buried in the ground, but looters were digging, searching for valuables and vaults. She wouldn’t risk losing what little they had left.
“What will you do now?” Sylvie asked. Black crepe covered the mirror above the mantelpiece, but it was obvious that Helene was keeping the house clean. Equally obvious was the fact that she, and not the butler, had answered the door.
“Unlike most of the staff, I will stay at my post until things have settled. They’ve all left to find employment elsewhere, everyone except Kirstin, Eli, and me. All three of us plan to take on side jobs for other households for our income, but this remains our home, at least for now.” She lowered her voice and leaned in. “Mr. Davenport is still here too. I expect he’ll stay until the will is found, at the very least. Naturally he wants to finish his semester at the university, so if he does leave the house, he’ll find other lodging in town.”
Surprise pierced through Meg’s fog of pain. “You have no copy of the will?” The official document would have been filed at the courthouse, a casualty of the fire. But . . . “Surely Hiram stored one here.”
“That’s what we all assumed. It wouldn’t be right for us staff to search, but Mr. Davenport has looked all over, to no avail. It must turn up sometime, though. And if the property goes to him, as I imagine it must, as Hiram’s only living relative, perhaps he’ll keep me on. I have no desire to leave.”
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