by Kat Ross
The whole time we’d been talking, my eyes kept drifting towards the center of that spotlight. But my view of what lay there was blocked by two patrolmen and the corner of the grain elevator. Now, we followed Mallory a dozen steps to the open space at the very edge of the East River where what remained of Anne Marlowe lay face-up in the thin rain.
“She was covered with a burlap sack,” Mallory explained. “The watchman actually tripped over the body. He thought it was a bag of grain at first.”
The sack now lay to the side, carefully folded. Beside me, I heard Nellie take in a sharp breath. John was perfectly still, but I could somehow feel his heart racing. I knew he was picturing someone else lying there.
“Cause of death was strangulation?” I heard myself say in a calm voice that seemed like another person entirely.
“Yes,” Mallory said. “The chain was ripped from a longer length we found in the kiln building. We’re still working out how he managed to do that. But the links match perfectly.”
“Not a cutting tool?”
“No. They were torn apart with brute force.”
I studied the body, trying to blot out the horror of what had been done to another human being and focus only on what it told me about her killer. The chain had been wrapped three times around her neck, so tightly that her lower jaw had been pushed up at an unnatural angle. From the regularity of her features, I guessed that she had been attractive in life, perhaps even heart-breakingly lovely. But the ghastly bloating and discoloration made it impossible to tell.
She was fully dressed, lying on her back with her arms arranged at her sides as though she were sleeping. Her gown was beige with thin pink stripes and a broad lace collar that fell over the shoulders. Only her shoes were missing, but it seemed not unlikely that they had fallen off in the struggle.
Anne Marlowe’s left wrist had been slashed open but there was only a small amount of blood, indicating the wound was inflicted post-mortem.
“The writing is over here,” Mallory said, pointing to an area of wall about fifteen feet north of the body. “It seemed like gibberish until you mentioned the backwards Latin. What do you think, Miss Pell?”
It took only a moment to translate what I saw, which was this:
Erebihorp tsetop mulos em srom
A strange chill went through me as I spoke the words:
“Mors me solum potest prohibere.”
“Which means?”
“Only death can stop me.”
Mallory growled. “If it’s death he wants, I’m sure a jury would be delighted to arrange it. Well, we know we’re dealing with an educated man at least. You don’t learn Latin in the free schools.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “John, would you be good enough to stand over there, just to the right of it? Now raise your hand up as though you were going to write something. Excellent! How tall are you, John? About five foot ten? I think we can safely say our man is of similar build, perhaps an inch or so taller. So just shy of six feet.”
Mallory nodded. “That seems a safe deduction.”
“What about footprints? The ground is soft from the rain.”
“Yes, we found several sets. One is clearly the watchman’s. There are at least three others, I’ve already taken precise measurements and noted the pattern of the soles. I’d say that two are large enough to fit the man we’re looking for. So if we ever find his boots, we may get a match.”
“I’d like to examine the body, if you don’t mind,” John ventured. “I have some medical expertise.”
“Certainly, just be quick about it,” Mallory said, glancing toward the alley that led back to Sixty-Third Street. “I’ve learned about all I can here. She needs to go to the Morgue for formal identification. And before you ask, the watchman saw and heard nothing. He says he passes by about every half hour, so I figure death occurred sometime between three and three-thirty a.m.”
“Any signs of a carriage?” I asked.
“None, and I looked first thing.”
“Then how did he get her here?”
Mallory just shook his head.
“I already sent some men to rouse Niblo’s owner and find out what time she left, and whether or not she was alone. But I don’t think we’ll know much until tomorrow.”
Niblo’s Garden was one of New York’s grandest and most popular theaters, especially in the summertime. It had burned to the ground twice over the years, and each time been rebuilt, most recently by the department store magnate A.T. Stewart. I’d passed by it a few days before, on the way to Straker’s flat, and had a vague sense of seeing an advertisement for a Jules Verne epic.
“Wasn’t the Forsizi kid found by the Union Square slave market?” Nellie pointed out. “Maybe there’s a connection to the theatre. I know Niblo’s is on lower Broadway, but…”
We all turned at a soft exclamation from John. He was crouched down next to Anne Marlowe’s head, which was angled slightly to the side.
“There’s something here,” he said. “It appears to be burn marks.”
“I thought those were lacerations from the chain,” Mallory said, bracing hands on knees and shifting to stay out of John’s light.
“No, they’re definitely burns. Here, here and here.” He indicated one dark spot to the left of the jaw and two to the right. “You see, it looks quite similar to the characteristics of a cigarette burn. Whatever touched her was at least four hundred degrees. The blister hasn’t even formed yet, which is consistent with a third-degree burn.” John carefully turned her head as far as the brutally cinched chain would allow. “You see how the edges are sharply defined?”
“So you’re telling me he’s a smoker?” Mallory asked. “That he tortured her first?”
I thought of the Turkish Elegante stub sitting in an envelope inside my vanity. But John’s next words surprised me.
“No. I said they look like cigarette burns. But they’re not.” He sat back on his heels. “You’re not going to like this.”
Mallory sighed, took off his hat and ran a hand through thinning brown hair. “I don’t like anything about this day so far. How much worse could it get?”
“Worse,” John said. “I’m ninety-nine percent certain they’re fingerprints.”
Perfect silence greeted this bizarre statement.
“Fingerprints,” Mallory echoed flatly. “Burned into her flesh.”
“The ridges are quite visible. I’m just telling you what I’m seeing.”
Mallory leaned in until his face hovered just inches from Anne Marlow’s. He swore under his breath.
“You see them?” John asked softly.
“I see them.”
“The positioning seems to indicate a right-handed individual gripping the throat just so.” John mimed holding Anne the way you might if you were pinning someone down, or if you were large and powerful enough to lift her off her feet. “The thumb here, and the pointer and middle fingers here.”
“But it’s impossible,” Mallory objected. “Even if a man’s flesh could get that hot, which it can’t, the defining patterns of the skin would be burned away. So it must be something of wood or metal. There’s no other explanation.”
John didn’t respond.
“Could a person forge a device made to resemble a fingerprint?” Mallory demanded.
“It’s possible,” John said, although his tone implied that he found the likelihood of such a scenario to be vanishingly small.
“Something like a…a brand.” Mallory nodded to himself. “Yes, it must be. Why is another matter. But this killer is clearly a lunatic. We may never know why. All I want to know is who.” His head snapped around. “Miss Bly! I don’t object to your publishing a story. It might even bring some witnesses out of the woodwork. But you are to keep these burns to yourself. Also the writing. If the public learns we have a murderer taunting the police in Latin—and penned in blood no less—we’ll have a panic on our hands. Half the city is sleeping with windows open due to the heat, and the other half is on the
rooftops. I agree that the Rickard killing seems to be linked, but I’m not sure about the Italian kid. I’ll need to speak with the detective who handled that one.” Mallory seemed almost to be talking to himself at this point. I knew it was time to leave. But I needed to be sure he understood what we were dealing with. For I was now fairly certain about one thing.
“Sergeant?” I laid a hand on his sleeve.
“Miss Pell?” Mallory replied distractedly, as the clatter of hooves signified the arrival of the morgue wagon.
“There will be more, unless you catch him,” I said. “Probably very soon.”
The detective held my gaze for a moment. He wasn’t a handsome man, but he had nice eyes. Hazel, with flecks of gold. In the instant before he looked away, I saw a flash of…not fear, exactly. Not yet. But worry.
Sergeant Mallory knew.
“Keep in touch, Miss Pell!” he called after us, as we made our way back to the carriage.
Dawn was fast approaching now, casting a tired, grey light over the proceedings. The ramshackle buildings that had seemed so ominous when we arrived in the dark of night now struck me as simply seedy and more than a little pitiful. It was a lonely place to die.
“I’m going to Niblo’s tomorrow,” I told Nellie and John. “If Mrs. Rivers doesn’t follow your father’s lead and put bars on the windows.”
“Maybe she should,” he said. “I might be less worried about you.”
“John’s right,” Nellie said. “You’re mad to stay there, Harry.”
“Maybe I won’t then,” I declared, reaching a sudden decision.
“You won’t?”
“How would you fancy a trip upstate?” I asked John, as we turned south onto First Avenue and some semblance of civilization again. “To Cassadaga Lake?”
“Becky Rickard’s sister,” he said, interest sparking in his tired eyes.
“I can’t quite explain it, but I still feel she’s the key to this case. She was the first victim, and the most savagely killed.” Nellie shot me a dubious look. “Not that Anne Marlowe’s death wasn’t savage. But Becky was stabbed. Thirty-one times.”
“And bitten,” John quietly reminded us.
“Exactly,” I said. “It feels different. More personal.”
“The ones after…it’s almost as if Becky gave him a taste for it, so he kept going. But she’s the one he really wanted. And to know why, we need to know who she was. If her sister will speak with us…”
“I’ll cable her ahead tomorrow while you’re at Niblo’s,” John said.
“And I’ll join you in interviewing the other cast members,” Nellie offered. “I’ll need to for the story anyway.”
We arranged the details of the following day’s plans as the carriage carried us downtown. Traffic was still thin, but morning rush hour in New York starts early and wagons and peddlers’ carts and all manner of two- and four-wheeled conveyances were gradually filling the streets. I agreed to meet Nellie at the theatre at noon. John would buy our train tickets (including one for Mrs. Rivers, whom I would need to coax into the trip), and inform Edward of the latest developments. We hashed over what we had learned and made lists of questions.
But by unspoken agreement, there was one topic we avoided. The most inexplicable and disturbing thing of all.
No one mentioned the fingerprints that had been seared into Anne Marlow’s throat.
When I returned home, I found the Bank Street Butchers sleeping peacefully on the carpet. I woke them with gentle shakes and they slipped into the early morning, leaving only six mugs with traces of hot chocolate around the rims and grimy smudges on the parlor sofa. Billy was not among them.
Mrs. Rivers dozed in an easy chair. I covered her with a blanket and stood there for a moment, swaying a bit on my feet. Exhaustion and despair washed over me in a wave. Another young woman was dead. Billy had vanished, and I could no longer make myself believe that he would turn up anytime soon. I had sent him to some terrible fate. I’d drawn the attention of a savage killer, and put us all at risk. When Mrs. Rivers woke up, she would be furious. And rightfully so. I’d made a mess of things so far.
Then Connor sat up, rubbing his eyes, and I pulled myself together enough to update him on Anne Marlowe, leaving out the more lurid details. I think he sensed my black mood, for he awkwardly put an arm around my shoulder and gave me a little pat.
“It’s all right, Harry,” he said.
“No, it’s not.”
“Myrtle—”
“That’s the problem!” I burst out. “I’m not Myrtle. Myrtle would have solved it already. She would have solved it days ago. I’m just…I’m just not as good as she is, and I never will be.”
There. I’d said it. And in my heart, I believed it for truth.
Connor gave me an even look. “I was about to say, Myrtle wouldn’t have done anything differently than you have. You’ve worked every angle there is to work. It’s just a tough nut. This Straker. Is it him? Do you think he... he took Billy?”
I just shook my head and tried not to cry. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.”
“I’ll report him missing today if you like,” Connor offered.
“Yes,” I said. “Please do that. Does he have any family?”
But of course he didn’t.
When Mrs. Rivers finally woke up, I made a half-hearted attempt at feigning illness, which the old bird saw through instantly.
“Sit down, Harry,” she said, not unkindly. “I’ll make you some eggs and toast.”
I slumped into a chair at the kitchen table. “Any coffee?”
“There’s a fresh pot on the stove.”
I poured a cup and wrapped my hands around the warmth. “I’m sorry,” I said, keeping my eyes on the wide-beamed wood floor, immaculate as always and faded nearly white from years of scrubbing.
I felt a powerful urge to unburden myself, to confess to all the lies I had told this good woman over the last five days, and a simultaneous impulse to somehow salvage the situation by telling yet more lies. The problem is I couldn’t think of any decent ones.
Mrs. Rivers cracked two eggs into a bowl and began to whisk them with practiced efficiency. “Care to tell me what’s going on?”
I’d expected her to yell at me, or at the very least to deliver a lecture on the behavior expected of young ladies, and how I’d failed miserably to meet those expectations. But she seemed calm. Reasonable, even. So I decided to make a clean breast of it.
“I’m investigating a murder,” I said, the coffee perking me up some. “Three murders, actually. They’re probably connected. John and Nellie and Edward are helping me. Connor too. Except Nellie thinks it’s Myrtle’s case.” I took another sip. “And the client thinks I am Myrtle.”
“I see.” Mrs. Rivers set a frying pan on the stove and placed two pieces of bread into the toaster, which always reminded me of a medieval torture rack.
“I know what you’re thinking,” I said, still feeling half like an utter fraud. “But Myrtle was only sixteen when she solved her first case. I’ve told Uncle Arthur, and I think I can get him to talk to the Society for Psychical Research, if I have a good result. That’s what I want to do with my life, work for them. I think I’d be good at it. I just need a chance to prove myself.”
“Did someone come after you yesterday?” Mrs. Rivers asked, swirling the eggs around in the pan.
“Yes. And it scared me, but not enough to quit. What are you going to do?”
Mrs. Rivers didn’t answer right away. She finished cooking breakfast, buttered the toast, and set it on a plate. Then she poured herself a cup of coffee and joined me at the table.
“Myrtle’s not easy to have for a sister, is she?”
I shrugged and took a bite of toast. “She’s all right.”
“I remember once when you were five, and she was twelve. Your parents had gone to Wallingford after the terrible tornado there. Aunt Marny lived not far from the path of the whirlwind, and she’d begged your father to offer
his aid as a medical doctor. They’d left at once, of course, and were gone for several days. Your sister spent the afternoon locked in her room, which was hardly unusual for Myrtle. You kept trying to get her to come out and play with you. You did worship her so.”
I scowled and shook salt on my eggs.
“Anyway, at about four o’clock she came downstairs with a sticky sweet smile on her face that should have tipped me off right away. In hindsight, Myrtle was up to something. But you’d been a perfect terror all morning and I suppose I just hoped that Myrtle was finally behaving as a sister to you.”
“Me, a perfect terror?” I objected. “But I was always a docile child.”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full, Harry,” Mrs. Rivers said absently. “And docile is not the word I would choose. You just wanted a bit of attention from her, but the only time Myrtle noticed your existence is when she needed a subject for one of her atrocious experiments.”
“Experiments?”
“It’s all right, dear, you’ve clearly blotted it out of your memory. Probably for the best. In any event, I was in the midst of preparing a roast for dinner. Myrtle said she had something she wanted to show you upstairs. Well, the next thing I knew, you came tearing into the kitchen, white as a sheet. When I asked what had happened, you started to cry and babbled about the house being haunted. I marched up to Myrtle’s room and there she was, cool as a cucumber. She didn’t deny it. Myrtle never did. She usually seemed faintly surprised that we thought she’d done something wrong. She explained that she was merely trying to teach you a lesson about observation. So she’d turned down the lights and orchestrated a series of cheap parlor tricks, which naturally were terrifying to a five-year-old child. She had you convinced that spirits had moved the furniture around and made Myrtle levitate. I believe there was also something about ectoplasm coming out of her mouth.”
An unpleasant memory surfaced from the depths. Not the whole thing, just fragments. Myrtle peering down at me, like an entomologist examining some interesting species of spider.