by Kat Ross
Once I’d stopped hating her, I vowed that I would work for them myself or die trying.
I knew the New York offices were downtown somewhere, but I’d never been able to find the exact address. Their president was a man named Benedict Wakefield. He seemed to be very rich, but exactly how and why was ambiguous. The only thing I knew for sure was that he was one of Edison’s key investors in the Pearl Street Station, the first electrical power plant in New York.
The American S.P.R. kept the identities of its agents strictly confidential. But I’d learned that it had two distinct and warring factions. The leader of the skeptics was a man named Harland Kaylock. He was thirty-seven, unmarried, and lived in one of the new French-style flats on West Fifty-Seventh Street. I’d followed him around town a couple of times, hoping he might lead me to the S.P.R. offices. He was very tall and thin, with sallow skin and a hooked nose. He dressed impeccably and never smiled, at least not that I saw. Mr. Kaylock’s training was as a professional magician. I watched his hands, and his fingers were so quick and nimble they made me think of a capuchin monkey I’d seen at the Central Park menagerie.
Mr. Kaylock’s arch-rival at the S.P.R. was Orpha Winter. She led the zealots and true believers, who saw the Society’s mission not as debunking the occult, but elevating it to a par with other branches of natural science. I’d only seen her once, when we had both attended a lecture at Columbia by Frank Podmore, one of the authors of Phantasms of the Living, a sweeping study of psychic phenomena commissioned by the London S.P.R.
Orpha Winter sat in the front row of the hall. She had lush honey-blonde hair, which she wore in a complicated pile atop her head. Men stared at that hair, and I could see them wondering what it would look like unpinned and flowing down her back. She had tiny hands and feet, like a doll, and very red lips, and they were fixed in a small smile that never altered.
Mr. Winter was a banker, a stiff, prematurely grey fellow who rarely spoke and sat at his wife’s side like a mouse next to a lion. Afterwards, they were surrounded by a circle of admirers. She made a pretense of asking his opinion and leaning on his arm, but it was no secret who was the dominant personality in that marriage.
I heard that the battles between Orpha Winter and Harland Kaylock were the stuff of legends.
Uncle Arthur was a new member of the London chapter, so I assumed that he was communicating with his contacts there about the Rickard case. However, it was those two I’d have to impress if I wanted employment on this side of the Atlantic. I wasn’t sure it was even possible to make them both happy, but while my personal sympathies lay with Mr. Kaylock’s faction, Mrs. Winter was far too powerful to ignore.
I was just contemplating this problem yet again when Mrs. River knocked on the door.
“It’s eight o’clock, Harry!” she called. “You’d best start getting ready.”
I glanced through the window at the lengthening shadows on Tenth Street, astonished that so many hours had passed. Indeed, it was growing dark outside. I jumped up and returned the box to its place under my bed. Then I took a hot bath and washed my hair in a lemon juice concoction my mother swore by. When I emerged from the tub, I found a new dress waiting, a simple yet lovely silk gown of the deepest blue with short sleeves and a tight bodice.
“It matches your eyes, dear,” Mrs. Rivers said. “Go ahead, try it on.”
I hugged her and tried not to wince as she laced me in.
“Now for your hair,” Mrs. Rivers said. “Sit down, Harry, I have an idea.”
“This thing isn’t made for sitting,” I grumbled, shifting the voluminous skirts around until I managed to perch on the edge of my vanity bench.
I watched in the mirror as she expertly set a series of lacquered Japanese combs in my hair, concealing its short length. Then she slid a choker of sapphires around my neck. They felt cool against my skin in the stuffy room.
“Your mother won’t mind,” Mrs. Rivers said, dabbing faintly tinted beeswax on my lips to give them a pink gloss. “She means you to have her jewellery anyway. Now, Edward says tonight’s theme is ‘The Splendors of Nature.’ I thought you could go as The Night Sky.”
I stared at the exotic creature in the vanity. It didn’t look like me, but I supposed that was the point. It was as much a disguise as Connor’s castoff clothing. Let them all be lulled and think I was an empty-headed, frivolous thing.
I smiled evilly. Perhaps there would finally be an advantage to no one taking me seriously.
Connor let out a low whistle when he saw me. He would be coming along as our driver tonight, to keep an eye on things from the outside. Mrs. Rivers had scrubbed him cleaner than I’d ever seen before, and forced him into an outfit that he complained made him look like Little Lord Fauntleroy. I told him he should try getting laced into a corset sometime, if he wanted to know what sheer misery really felt like.
Sitting down was uncomfortable and eating out of the question, so I paced the front hall until my escorts arrived in the barouche at ten o’clock on the dot. John’s eyes bugged a little when I made my grand entrance down the staircase, but he recovered quickly and brushed his lips to my gloved hand.
“You look ravishing, Harry,” he murmured. “The other girls will be green with envy, and the men will curse my good fortune.”
John wore a conservative evening jacket with long tails and a starched white shirt. I could still detect faint bruising along his jaw from the fight in Hell’s Kitchen nearly a week ago, but it was mostly covered by his high collar.
Edward, on the other hand, had a reputation to live up to. As it was a costume ball, he enjoyed more latitude than usual in his evening attire, and he used every inch of it. I counted at least six shades of rose in his cravat, contrasted by tight violet pants and lilac stockings. His handkerchief was a peculiar shade of purple he identified as “byzantine,” and a pink carnation poked out of his lapel.
“I tried to convince Zenobia”—that was Edward’s little sister—”to come back from Newport, but she’s never been overly fond of the Kanes,” he said. “She refused even when I told her I planned to go as The First Blush of Sunrise!”
John made a sympathetic noise. “She’s certainly missing…something,” he said.
“Do you think I might make the papers?” Edward asked, brightening a little. “If they’re doing party portraits? Of course, black and white won’t do me justice, but still.”
“I’d say there’s a very good chance,” John replied with an admirably straight face.
Mrs. Rivers made a few minute adjustments to my hair and dress, pinched my cheeks for color, and declared me presentable, even to such a discriminating hostess as Temple Kane.
“Have her back by three, Mr. Weston!” she called down the steps as we climbed into the carriage.
“On my honor,” John called back with a salute.
Despite myself, I felt a flutter of excitement as we headed uptown. I’d never been inside the Kane mansion before, but I’d heard plenty of stories about it. Situated just above the stretch of Fifth Avenue that was becoming known as Millionaire’s Row, the Kanes rubbed elbows with such illustrious neighbors as the Astors and Vanderbilts. They were one of the first wealthy families to venture north of Fifty-Ninth Street (although others would soon follow suit), to what a quarter century before had been little more than a rutted dirt road cutting through a shantytown.
The Kane mansion faced Central Park, occupying most of the block between Sixty-Sixth and Sixty-Seventh Street. Designed by Stanford White, it was made of grey limestone and looked more like a museum than a private residence. All the windows were blazing with light as we joined the line of carriages pulled up in front.
“Ready for the lion’s den, Harry?” Edward asked, as a liveried footman in a powdered wig approached the barouche.
I surveyed the crowd of extravagantly attired men and women presenting their invitations at the front doors. One appeared to be wearing an actual taxidermied cat’s head as a hat.
“Oh, that’s just
Puss,” Edward said, stroking the wispy fuzz of a new mustache he seemed very proud of.
“It’s still wearing a collar,” I said faintly.
Edward patted my shoulder. “Let’s go find the punch.”
“Sneak me some back, will ya?” Connor implored from the driver’s seat. “It’s thirsty work, sitting around watching rich people.”
“I promise to bring you a pastry,” I said, as John helped me down.
“How about the first dance?” he asked, fluttering his lashes.
I twined my arm in his and smiled. “That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said all day.”
And so we drifted into the current of partygoers as it swept slowly but inexorably towards the Kanes’ ballroom, like a river to the sea.
Chapter 14
“I’d forgotten what a fine dancer you are,” I said as John twirled me around the floor in an intricate mazurka, a dance they say was inspired by the Polish cavalry racing across the steppes of Central Europe. The tempo certainly was fast, and my cheeks were flushed by the time I spun to a stop and we started a more sedate waltz.
“True dancing can’t be taught,” he said absently, gazing over my shoulder. “It’s improvised in the moment. It comes from the chemistry of the dancers, the space between them.”
“Well, my toes thank you,” I said. “It’s terribly unfair that women must wear slippers at these things, while men are shod in tough leather soles. And the mazurka is especially treacherous. All those quick little stomps.”
“Ah well, I’ve been practicing in secret,” John laughed. He shook hair from his eyes and glanced meaningfully at my bodice. “I wouldn’t want to get shot for any missteps.”
Not much got past my best friend, I thought. “Is it that obvious?”
“Not really. I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t seen you fooling with the…uh…placement just before we left.” His teasing expression sobered. “Are you expecting trouble tonight, Harry?”
I shook my head. “Just preparing for anything, I suppose. That’s one of Myrtle’s maxims. She likes to quote General Washington: ‘To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace’.”
“I suppose we are at war, at that. But is it with the Kanes?”
He glanced over at George Jr., who stood in the midst of a group of friends near the punchbowl. Like John, he had skipped a costume and wore traditional evening attire. He had blonde hair, slicked back, and an arrogant laugh that was already too loud. As I watched, he threw his head back and roared at some joke, a glass of champagne tipping precariously in one hand. Temple looked over sharply from across the ballroom. She didn’t seem pleased.
“I don’t know,” I said. “He’s a cad, but is he a killer? It strikes me as more than a little odd that he would ride the elevated in search of victims. The trains are dirty, crowded, infested with vermin. Why not just stalk them from a carriage? It’s more private, far fewer people would see his face, and it offers a quick escape route when the deed is done.”
John slid his hand into the small of my back and expertly pulled me close, then spun me away again. “You’re forgetting something, Harry. George likes slumming in downtown dives, like Billy McGlory’s Armory Hall on Hester Street. Rich boys pay to sit up in the balcony and watch the thugs brawling down below. I heard he got too drunk once and ended up getting hauled outside and robbed.” John grinned. “And left on the street without a stitch of clothing.”
“Billy’s a rough character,” I said. “Maybe that’s why George hired Thomas Sweet for protection.”
Billy McGlory was one of the city’s most prominent gangsters and club owners. Although Mayor Hewitt vowed during his campaign to shut down the seediest disorderly houses and red light districts, so far Billy had dodged the hammer. His bouncers were some of the most feared criminals of the Five Points, and the only edict they religiously enforced was that actual murder should not be committed inside the dance hall.
As we weaved through the other couples, I told John the famous story of how Billy once turned up at the offices of the New York Sun to complain about an article alleging a man had been stabbed at the Armory.
“He was stabbed just outside of McGlory’s,” Billy had objected to the editors. “I don’t permit stabbing and shooting inside.”
After re-interviewing the victim in the hospital, the newspaper ran a retraction the following day explaining that in fact, he had been stabbed on the street side of McGlory’s threshold.
“The place is a cesspool of beastliness and depravity,” John said earnestly, shaking his head in disapproval. Then he flashed white teeth in a wicked grin. “No wonder it’s so popular.”
“So you think riding the trains could be part of the thrill?” I wondered aloud.
“If we’re dealing with someone who’s a Jekyll and Hyde, like the papers say, he might adopt a totally different persona than the one he wears for the people around him,” John pointed out.
Two teenage girls in identical harlequin costumes, except with the black and white reversed, flashed past as we spun along the edge of the dance floor. Parthena and Permelia Sloane-Sherman, twins and debutantes extraordinaire. Their matching blue eyes aimed daggers at me through gold-painted colombinas on sticks. They liked John. Therefore, they didn’t like me.
“A mask of sanity,” I said.
“Yes.”
“And hunting in the streets would make him feel free, unencumbered by the expectations of society. Like a predator moving through the jungle.”
“Let’s say it is George,” John said. “What’s his connection to Straker?”
“What if Straker went back to Becky’s flat for some reason? What if he witnessed her murder? George could hardly leave him alive.”
“And yet we know that Straker was alive and at home the next day. At least, according to Brady.”
“According to Brady,” I repeated. “But there’s something off about his story. Nothing fits.”
My feet stumbled on the left box turn, but John caught me before I fell on my face in front of Mrs. Kane’s entire ballroom.
“It fits if Straker did it,” he said. “You may disagree with me on motive, but you must admit he’s the only one the evidence really points to. Maybe Becky was blackmailing George. Maybe he gave her the money and the book to get rid of her. But it could be a coincidence.”
We began the promenade.
“I don’t believe in coincidences,” I said.
“But what about Billy? He disappeared going to find Straker. How could George have known?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
“And back to Becky for a moment. Why would George want to kill her anyway?”
“So she wouldn’t reveal their affair,” I said. “It could ruin him if it came out.”
“But you said yourself that he’s a known cad. Becky wasn’t the first, and I’m sure she won’t be the last. George’s parents may not like it, but they haven’t disowned him yet.”
We spun past Temple Kane, who was chatting with a small circle of the most powerful women in the rigid hierarchy of New York Society. Mrs. Kane was in her late forties, but looked a decade younger. She wore a shimmering gown of gold leaf cunningly sewn to resemble fish scales. Her husband stood several paces away. His eyes passed over me, pausing for a moment, and I suddenly wondered if he recognized me from our brief encounter at Chamberlain’s. But then a fat, red-faced man started speaking to him and he turned his back to us.
“Maybe he was afraid Becky would be the final straw,” I mused.
The band struck up a new tune and John smoothly switched to a polka.
“Alright, I’ll give you that one, even though I’m not entirely convinced. But that in turn brings us to Raffaele and Anne. Are you really certain it’s the same killer?”
“I’m certain,” I said.
“So if the motive was to stop a blackmailer, then why go after them? They had no connection to Becky.”
“Because he’s mad,”
I said. “Because he likes it. Stalking them, subduing them, watching them die. It makes him feel powerful. And he’ll go to increasingly extreme lengths to recreate the rush he gets from killing.”
John considered this. “There’s been new research into a certain type of aberrant personality. Some call it mania without delirium, or moral insanity. It describes someone who engages in antisocial behaviour without regard for the consequences. They’re often fluent liars and seem entirely lacking in empathy. But in other ways they’re perfectly sane, capable of cool-headed planning and manipulation. The German psychiatrist Julius Koch has been doing preliminary work in this area.”
“Thank you, Doctor Weston,” I said, smiling. “I’d say that description could fit George Kane, or his henchman, or both. Speaking of whom, he’d have to be in on it, don’t you think?”
John didn’t respond. I felt his shoulders stiffen beneath my fingertips.
“What is it? Thomas Sweet?”
I hadn’t yet spotted George’s bodyguard, the one who had given Becky the grimoire, but that didn’t surprise me. Sweet was terrifying to look at, it was a large part of his effectiveness, and I somehow doubted that Temple Kane wanted her party guests in the presence of such a menacing man. He wouldn’t be far, I imagined, but he’d keep well out of sight.
John didn’t reply, just made a minute gesture with his chin toward the entrance foyer. I scanned the crowd. The Kane ballroom was immense, even by the standards of Mrs. Astor’s 400, as the oldest and richest families were known. In the tradition of too-much-is-never-enough, the carved and gilded walls were covered in heavy oil paintings, frescoes and chandeliers decorated the ceiling, and there were enough flowers to sink a battleship.
Bewigged waiters in 18th century outfits that would have fit right in at Versailles dispensed buckets of champagne to the flushed, chattering guests. I caught a quick glimpse of Edward, like some rare Amazonian parrot, escorting Puss and her stuffed cat to the other end of the dance floor, where dancers were lining up for a quadrille.