by Kat Ross
“Absolutely not! You can ask anyone.”
“Alright then,” I said. “There are several threads I plan to follow. I will pay you a visit tomorrow morning with an update on what I have found.”
And so we all departed Straker’s sad and rather ominous lodgings, Brady heading downtown for Maiden Lane, and John and I for our luncheon appointment on the Bowery.
“Nellie!” John said as we emerged onto Canal Street, its energetic hubbub and bright sunlight seeming like another world entirely. “Good thinking, Harry. She must be pals with all the police reporters in the city.”
“Yes, and since they’ll never give us the time of day—the police, I mean—we’ll just have to go around them. Oh, I’d give my eyeteeth for five minutes at the crime scene when it was still fresh! What clues did those fools overlook? But it’s too late now. We’ll just have to hope someone took decent notes.”
“And the ash?” John said. “Do you really think there was another person there?”
“I’m sure of it,” I answered. “Turkish Elegantes is a specialty brand. You can visit the Bedrossian Brothers and see if they recall any recent customers. Their shop is at 23 Wall Street. Think of it as a nice after-lunch walk.”
“And what will you be doing?” John demanded.
“That depends on what Nellie says,” I replied, slipping my arm through his. “Come on, I’ll buy you a bratwurst.”
The Third Avenue Elevated, which ran from South Ferry to Harlem, clattered overhead as we entered the cavernous, block-long space of the Atlantic Garden. Had it been a Sunday, nearly a thousand revellers would have packed the two-tier hall, mostly German families with all their children, brothers and sisters, cousins and neighbors. To the dismay of New York’s Puritans, beer drinking was the principal pursuit. But the place had none of the dissolute atmosphere of the city’s dance halls and concert saloons. It was clean and neat, with an ornately frescoed ceiling and lifelike mural that at first glance appeared to depict a tranquil rural scene, but which on closer inspection revealed itself to be a cemetery—an apt motif for our meeting, I thought.
Groups of men played cards and dominoes as they enjoyed a leisurely lunch. One could usually hear live music, anything from a quartet to a full orchestra, but as it was a Thursday afternoon, the place was quieter than usual. John and I bought sausages and sauerkraut at a counter near the door and pushed past the teenaged serving girls (all in extremely short skirts and red-topped boots with tinkling bells) until we spotted a familiar figure waiting at a quiet table near the rear stage.
“Harry! John! It’s good to see you both again,” Nellie called out, a smile lighting up her face, which never failed to strike me with its youth and prettiness. At the ripe old age of twenty-three, Nellie had gained notoriety as Joe Pulitzer’s new star reporter when she got herself committed to the lunatic asylum on Blackwell’s Island. The resulting articles she wrote for The New York World described it as a “human rat-trap,” with dozens of women bathing in the same ice-cold tub until the water turned black, rancid food, and some fourteen hours of the day spent sitting on hard benches, with inmates not permitted to speak or move.
This bit of so-called stunt reporting led to a grand jury investigation and sealed her reputation as the foremost woman journalist in the country—a profession that was still very much a boys’ club. She and Myrtle had that in common, both refusing to be bound by convention and pushing the limits of what women could accomplish. It solidified their friendship, which I had imposed upon by asking Nellie to meet us here. It was a risk, but one I had to take.
“So you’re interested in the von Linden murder,” she said, her wide brown eyes sparkling with curiosity. “Is Myrtle on the case?”
“You could say that,” I replied cagily, tearing into my sausage with a vengeance.
“I asked Fred for his notes. He wrote up the story and got a copy of the full police report.” She pulled a notebook out and began riffling through the pages. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
“Well then, let’s start with the official cause of death: exsanguination. She bled to death. Not surprising since she had thirty-one stab wounds.”
“Did they find the murder weapon?” John asked.
“A kitchen knife belonging to the victim. So perhaps a crime of impulse?” Nellie speculated.
“Perhaps,” I said. “What else?”
Nellie read for a moment. When she finally spoke, her voice was subdued. “It also says she was…bitten. About the face and neck. Incisal biting—that’s the front teeth.” Nellie looked up at us. “We’re not talking about teeth marks. We’re talking actual removal of the flesh. He took pieces out of her.”
“How do you know it’s a he?” John asked, laying his fork down. Both of us were rapidly losing our appetites.
“With crimes like this, it’s always a he,” Nellie responded flatly. “Here’s something…the police found a good quantity of chloral hydrate in the room. It seems she was an addict.”
I glanced at John. “Brady said she was slurring her words. He thought she was drunk.”
“It’s a powerful sedative,” John confirmed.
“Who’s Brady?” Nellie asked.
“Myrtle’s client,” I said. “He has a personal interest in discovering the murderer. Have the detectives got any leads?”
“Not yet.”
“Does it say if they found a book?”
“A book?” She scanned the notes. “What’s the title?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know.”
She looked at me strangely. “No, that’s not mentioned. But here’s something bizarre. The killer appeared to have an attack of conscience. He wrote on the wall, ignosce mihi deus. Seems the police had quite a time figuring it out at first.”
“Because it was Latin?” I asked.
“No, because it was written backwards.”
I could see John struggling to conjugate the verb and took pity on him. Latin was never his best subject. “It means, God forgive me,” I said.
“He probably did it after he covered the face, since there were blood drips from his fingers on the pillowcase,” Nellie murmured, scanning the notes.
I leaned forward. “What do you mean?”
Nellie looked up. “Oh, he covered her up. I suppose he didn’t like looking at his own handiwork. Her features had been nearly obliterated.”
John frowned. “Doesn’t that strike you as more than a bit contradictory? On the one hand, the killing is frenzied, vicious. But then he takes the time to cover her up. It’s almost a twisted act of kindness.”
“Or remorse,” Nellie said.
“What is it, Harry?” John prompted. “You know something.”
I looked up from my reverie. A tall blonde serving girl approached the table but Nellie waved her away.
“Today’s Herald has a small item on page six. An organ grinder, fourteen years old. He was strangled Tuesday night.” I looked down the length of the hall, at all the people eating and drinking, and thought of the teeming crowds in the streets outside, nearly a million and a half strong, oblivious to the fact that among them walked a killer. “The boy’s death only merited a few paragraphs. He wasn’t famous, like Becky Rickard, a.k.a. Valentina von Linden. But I remember one detail: a rag was placed over his face.”
John and Nellie were silent.
“Male. And asphyxiated rather than stabbed. You’ve got to admit, the crimes are different,” John said at last.
“I know. But we can’t ignore it,” I responded. “There could be other similarities we don’t know about.”
“I’m heading over to the World right now to meet with my editor,” Nellie said. “You can come along if you like. See if any of the crime beat boys are around.”
“And I’ll run down to the Bedrossian Brothers,” John said, adding wryly, “Who knows? Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll remember a sinister fellow buying Turkish Elegantes who considerately left his calling card.”
We made plans to meet later at Tenth Street and I accompanied Nellie to her offices at 32 Park Row. Mr. Pulitzer had grand plans to build a new headquarters that would be the world’s tallest building at twenty-six stories, but this dream wouldn’t be realized until the following year. For now, the popular newspaper occupied a nondescript five stories across from City Hall Park, in what was called Printing House Square because it was home to nearly all the city’s presses.
Nellie led me through the bustling newsroom to a desk occupied by a young man with ginger hair and an easy-going grin. This was the same “Fred” she had poached the notebook from and, once she’d dropped the name of the illustrious Myrtle Fearing Pell, he was happy to share the few facts he had gleaned about the latest murder.
“I’d been called to cover a fire in the Tenderloin or I would’ve written something,” he explained. “Still might, if I can get some quotes from the family. It’s a bit of a shocker. Probably a mugging gone bad, poor kid, though I don’t know who’d want to rob an organ grinder, most of ‘em rent their instruments because they can’t even afford to own them. It’s not much of a living, and this one was no exception.”
“Where did it happen?” I asked.
“Broadway and Fourteenth Street. The body was found at the base of the George Washington statue, by the slave market.”
Union Square was the city’s theater district, and the phrase was jokingly used to describe the south end of the park, where out-of-work actors would hang around hoping to catch a break from managers and agents who often cast their plays from the throngs of hopefuls.
“It must have been after midnight, as the area is crowded until quite late in the evening,” Fred said. “The sick bastard killed the kid’s monkey too, can you believe it?” He shook his head at the seemingly limitless depravity of New York City—depravity that was helping The World’s circulation grow by leaps and bounds. “There’s your headline.”
“What about the state of the body? I read that the face had been covered.”
Fred nodded. “I heard it was a handkerchief.”
“The Herald said a rag.”
Fred shrugged. “Does it really matter? Oh yeah, my friend at the Times said there was a weird symbol burned into the grass at the base of the statue. No way of telling if it’s related. His editor passed on the story, so he gave me his sketch.” Fred dug through the mountain of loose paper on his desk and pulled out a scrap with a bunch of squiggly lines that I copied into my own notebook. “Anyway, I can’t tell you much more. No witnesses have come forward with anything useful. The kid’s name was Raffaele Forsizi, family fresh off the boat from Italy. Seems he was on his way home from Central Park. He’d been playing there all day.” He lowered his voice. “I did get one piece of information they haven’t published yet.”
He told us, and then jumped to his feet in a sudden burst of energy. “Sorry, ladies, but I’ve got to run. I’m on deadline, and my editor will have my hide if I’m late. Hey, if your sister solves it, do I get an exclusive interview?”
“If my sister solves it, I swear she won’t talk to anyone else,” I said with a smile. “Do you happen to have the family’s address?”
Fred gave me a building number in the West Forties and I thanked him again, but he was already jamming a hat on his head and blowing us a kiss as he fairly levitated out the door. Nellie walked me back out to Park Row and made me swear to keep her apprised of any new developments. I could see her journalistic instincts told her there was a lot more to the story than I was letting on, but she didn’t press too hard.
“Myrtle always plays her cards close to the vest,” Nellie said. “But I expect the World to get a scoop when she’s ready to lay them on the table!”
The competition among New York’s five major dailies was intense and somehow heightened by their close proximity to each other (I could see four of them, The Sun, The Times, The World and The Tribune, from where I was standing). Mr. Pulitzer may have been a crusader but he loved scandal and sensation just as much, if not more.
And I had a feeling there would be plenty of both before this case was over.
I said goodbye to Nellie, promising to keep in touch. It was now late afternoon and heavy, dark clouds had rolled in. The temperature was dropping quickly, providing relief from the oppressive heat but hardly lightening my grim mood. Pedestrians scattered as the first drops began to fall. I picked up my pace, wishing I’d thought to bring an umbrella.
As much as I was dying to share what I’d learned with John, I didn’t go straight home. Instead, I ducked around the corner to the Western Union office at 195 Broadway.
Here I will tell you quickly about my Uncle Arthur.
First off, he’s not actually my uncle. More of an unofficial godfather. But I’ve been calling him that since I was a child and although we may not be blood relations, he is and always will be family to me.
Second, he is a doctor but his passion is writing adventure stories, and I think he will be famous for them someday. Uncle Arthur’s latest novella A Study in Scarlet, featuring the brilliant and mercurial detective Sherlock Holmes, had just been published in Beeton’s Christmas Annual a year before, and though not many have yet read it, I thought it was brilliant. He says Holmes was modelled on a former professor, which I don’t deny, but I also think there’s more than a little of Myrtle in there, and maybe even myself, although that’s probably wishful thinking.
In any event, he followed my sister’s exploits with keen interest. At twenty-seven, Arthur was only a year older than Myrtle and they’d always been close. I’ll confess, it wasn’t easy growing up in her shadow. Besides having a dazzling intellect and vast storehouse of forensic knowledge, Myrtle was born with an aptitude for unravelling the most convoluted and devious criminal minds. Her record was unblemished, except for one man, but we shall come to him later. What I’m trying to say is that I couldn’t resist bragging a little. All my life, I’d been the other Miss Pell. The drab little planet orbiting Myrtle’s star. Now, I had a case of my own between my teeth, and I was running with it.
As I composed the cable, I told myself that there were prominent occult elements which would be of interest to Uncle Arthur, who, as I mentioned before, was an ardent Spiritualist. He might even have contacts here that would be essential for the investigation. There was little danger that he would communicate with Myrtle herself, since no one had any idea where she’d gone off to.
Plus, Uncle Arthur was a member of the S.P.R. It could be the very introduction I’d been yearning for. They didn’t hire kids, but if I managed to solve this case, they might rethink their position.
I told myself all these perfectly reasonable things, but in the end, I was just hoping to impress him.
I summarized the case as succinctly as possible and paid the exorbitant transatlantic fee to send it to Southsea. Then I dashed into the rain and caught a jam-packed streetcar on Church Street that brought me uptown to Sixth Avenue and Tenth Street.
“Oh dear, you’re soaked to the bone!” Mrs. Rivers exclaimed as I made my way upstairs, leaving large, squelchy footprints on the rose-patterned carpet. “I’ll brew up a pot of tea.”
She headed toward the kitchen, still sprightly and dark-haired despite her advanced years. Not much seemed to surprise our housekeeper anymore. She’d practically raised Myrtle (which couldn’t have been very pleasant) and seemed resigned to the fact that her charges had little interest in men, fashion or parties—the Holy Trinity of upper class femininity.
“It’s a monsoon out there,” I told John, who lounged in his usual place on the parlor sofa. Annoyingly, he was bone dry, his errand having been much briefer than mine.
Connor was there too, curled up in an armchair with one of the penny dreadfuls John had taught him to read when he wasn’t busy mugging old ladies. This one was titled Feast of Blood, and featured a skeleton looming over an unconscious maiden in a clinging white gown. When she was in a crusading mood, Mrs. Rivers would confiscate them, but he s
eemed to have an endless supply.
“At least you got clean the natural way,” Connor complained, looking me over with a jaundiced eye. “She made me take a bath. Said I couldn’t come in for supper otherwise. With soap!” His voice took on a tone of profound outrage. “The lads’ll think I’ve gone soft.”
Mrs. Rivers sniffed. “I’m sure you’ll manage to get filthy again before bedtime, Master Connor. You always do.”
He smiled in quiet satisfaction and went back to reading.
My housekeeper handed me a fluffy towel and I dried myself off as John related his visit to the exclusive hand-rolled tobacco shop.
“Dead end,” he said ruefully. “No one remembered any particular customer and they don’t keep lists. How did you make out?”
Mrs. River had gone back downstairs, so I told them everything I’d learned from Fred about the killing of the Forsizi boy. Connor gave a low whistle.
“The monkey too? That seems...what’s the word?”
“Gratuitous,” John offered. “It means over the top.”
“Yeah, gratuitous,” Connor repeated, rolling the word around in his mouth like a gumball.
“So is stabbing someone thirty-one times.” I peeled off a wet stocking and flexed my toes, which had shrivelled into little white prunes. “And the face was covered. Again, it’s almost as if two different people were there. One who was full of rage, another who felt guilt or pity for the victim.”
“Or a single person who is terribly conflicted,” John pointed out. “You’re familiar with the case of Louis Vivet?”
I was, but Connor wasn’t, so John summarized his peculiar history. A Frenchman, Vivet suffered from what doctors called multiple personality disorder, a rare condition where a traumatic event causes a person’s psyche to split into distinct identities, some of whom may be entirely unaware of the others. In Vivet’s case, the proximal event was a terrifying encounter with a viper that wrapped itself around his left arm when he was thirteen years old (although it should be noted that he also had a wretched childhood, which certainly played a large factor in his illness).