“Yes,” Barney said. “Right after my crew found the bones from the cemetery.”
“And before you told anybody officially?”
“Well, yes. I didn’t know what to do. I sent the crew home because I was pretty sure we shouldn’t do any more digging right then, but I needed to think. I was kind of wandering around the building lot and I kept stumbling over skulls—it was like a nightmare. And I also knew I couldn’t just cover everything up either, because too many people had already seen the bones. So I called Harold.”
“Wait—Harold? I thought you called Marty first. Why Harold?”
“My company was one of the contractors for his museum, a few years ago. After that we were drinking buddies, sort of, and I knew he knew something about history. So I asked him to meet me at one of our usual places, and after a couple of beers I told him what I’d found—the cemetery, I mean.”
“Uh, Barney, I still don’t see the problem here. You called someone in the historical community—that was the right move. Why did you need to call Marty after that, and why didn’t you tell her you’d already talked to Harold? And you, Harold—why didn’t you mention to Marty that Barney had already talked to you?”
“It’s complicated,” Harold said glumly.
That was an understatement. “Then somebody had better explain. You asked to see me now, right? Not the other way around.”
“Nell,” Harold began, “I already knew about the other bodies, and the cannons.”
“How?”
“I’m Harriet Featherstone’s second cousin. Yes, different surname, but my family passed down the story about how the two men died, and that one was a Featherstone. I assume that Harriet conveyed that information to you somehow.”
I nodded. “Yes, she left a detailed letter, which we just found.”
Harold went on. “My side of the family never wrote it down. It was kind of a family joke, for years. I didn’t have an exact address, but I knew more or less where to look.”
“Did the family talk just about the bodies and who they were, or did they mention the cannons too?”
“Both. Without the cannons there would have been no bodies. Look, I don’t know if anyone in the family actually believed the whole thing, but it made for good conversation. Before you ask, I never went looking for them until now.”
“So why didn’t you just tell somebody?” I was getting close to exploding.
Now Harold and Barney were avoiding looking at each other. “Well,” Barney began, “I was running kind of short of money for the project already, and Harold suddenly got interested. He said something like, ‘I know how we can make some money fast, but you’re going to have to help me, and you can’t talk about it to anyone else.’ Then he told me that family story, about the bodies and the cannons. We were already kind of drunk, so we decided to see if it was true, and went back to the site. Harold knew where to look, and we found ’em.”
Very little of this was making sense to me. “And I’ll say again—why didn’t you just report this to someone then?”
“Ask Harold,” Barney said.
I turned to Harold. “Talk,” I demanded.
“Nell, do you have any idea how much pristine eighteenth-century cannons dating from the Revolution will bring at auction or sale?”
“Of course I don’t,” I snapped. “I deal with books.”
“Conservatively, twenty-five to fifty thousand dollars apiece. To both museums and private buyers. From a quick glance, it looked like we had a couple of dozen. Conservatively the lot would be worth maybe seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
“Honestly? Or on the black market?” I had no idea if there was a black market for cannons, but these two guys were acting pretty strange about the whole thing.
Harold just shrugged without answering. “So there we were, with a load of cannons that nobody else knew about. And Barney had machines on the lot across the street that would be capable of moving them. All we needed was a truck for transport, and we’d be on our way. We’d hide them, then I’d sell them, and we’d split the proceeds.”
“So what went wrong? Because clearly something did.”
“Coming out of the bar I tripped and tore up my ankle,” Barney said. “Which meant I couldn’t handle the heavy machinery, and we didn’t dare bring anyone else into the deal. But we thought we could wait for a day or two. We didn’t know that Marty had seen a body all those years ago and would go looking for it again.”
“So you called her about the cemetery bodies not knowing that she knew about the other one, and then the police discovered us poking around, and everything snowballed. And of course Marty thought of Harold first when we discovered the cannons on our own and called him.”
“Yes. And our whole plan went up in smoke. Too many people knew too much.”
“So we foiled your devious scheme. That was when you disappeared from the lot?”
“Yes. My leg was killing me, even though I had it wrapped up, so I figured I’d better get it looked at, and you know how long waiting time is in the ER around here, so I didn’t manage to get back to the lot. And they X-rayed the leg and taped it up again and gave me some really great painkillers, and I went home and crashed.”
That made some sort of sense. “Tell me, Harold—do you have any idea whose property those cannons would be now, after all these years? We know who lived in that building when they were hidden, but after that? Do they belong to the descendants of the family? To the city? Would your museum make a play for them? And why the hell are you telling me this now? I probably would never have known.”
“When we knew our plan was dead, I decided that we’d better get on the right side of the story. Much the way you no doubt plan to, Nell,” Harold said. “Our establishments need the publicity, crass though that sounds.”
I sat back in my seat and stared at them. They’d been planning a major crime, although I wasn’t sure who would have suffered. But it still had to be a crime, until proven otherwise. But for various reasons the plan had collapsed, and now they were coming clean, but only to me. What was my responsibility here? I wished I could ask James, but that would have to wait.
“So what do you want out of this?” I asked Harold.
“I think we should collaborate on getting the story out. You know the history and the people involved, and I’ve got information on the cannons and their history. It’s a win-win situation for both of us.”
He had a point, I had to concede. Instead of stealing valuable historic artifacts, he might even come out looking like a hero, or at least an expert. “My name—and the Society’s—comes first on any public discussion. After all, Marty and I were made aware of the bodies and the cannons legitimately. But I think we can work together. While you might have been planning an illegal act, it never happened, and no one could prove otherwise.”
“What about me?” Barney said plaintively.
I wanted to tell the man that the publicity would be good for his project, but I still wondered if people would be uncomfortable living on a former cemetery site, and would they feel sure that all the bodies were gone? “Maybe you can work out some sort of finder’s fee with the city. Don’t give up hope just yet—at least your building will be famous.”
Barney brightened, but only a bit.
“You won’t share this information with anyone, will you, Nell?” Harold asked anxiously.
“I’ll let you decide how much you want to tell publicly. From the Society’s end the story stands on its own merits.” I stood up. “I’ve got to start working on the publicity. This story should have a lot of popular appeal, and I want to catch the next news cycle. But thank you for filling me in.”
“It seemed right that you should know, Nell,” Harold told me. “We are, after all, colleagues.”
Of a sort, I admitted to myself, but I wasn’t quite ready to trust him. “I appreciate your telling me. I’ll see you out.”
Chapter Twenty-two
I managed to cobble togethe
r the board report in record time. The accuracy of its details might be questionable, but at least the Society wasn’t losing money—no easy feat in these days when there were so many demands for funding for a wide range of municipal and private projects. I also happened to know that most board members couldn’t be bothered to read all the details of my careful spreadsheets, choosing instead to go straight to the bottom line. Only a couple ever asked me later about one point or another. Frankly, like many cultural institutions, board members were chosen for their ability to contribute significant money, and those who accepted the “honor” did it for the prestige, whether or not they ever showed up for meetings or events, not because they cared deeply for history or documents or the city of Philadelphia. But the system worked, and I wasn’t about to change things.
But at tonight’s meeting I had a surprise for the board. I’d asked Marty to attend, to back me up—while she was no longer a board member, most of the current members knew her well and weren’t about to object. Dylan was tucked in a corner, listening eagerly.
I cleared my throat and began. “Ladies and gentlemen, while this is a regularly scheduled board meeting, I have some interesting news to present to you. The summary of the Society’s financial position is in front of you, and you may go home and study it on your own, but the bottom line is that we’re in good shape, or as good as any cultural institution in the city. But what I need to describe to you is both an interesting piece of the city’s history, and a significant opportunity for the Society to extend its reach within the community as well as collaborate with one of our fellow institutions in a new and unusual way.”
Almost everyone seemed to be paying attention, while a few looked at their watches—they were used to short meetings. “You may have noticed some small news items in the paper or online over the past few days, involving a construction project only a few blocks away. I won’t go into the details, and most have not been released publicly yet, but it promises to be a significant archeological find. This past weekend a cemetery which has been forgotten and paved over for more than a century was uncovered by a local contractor. Its discovery in turn led to another discovery, smaller but more significant.” I proceeded to give an abbreviated report on what Marty and Dylan and I had uncovered over the past few days. I segued into Harold Stevens’s role. I tried to keep it short and to the point, but I wanted to convey the importance of what we had learned and how we could take advantage of that on behalf of the Society.
“What I’m proposing now is that the Society and the new Revolutionary War museum work together to interpret what we found. The Society has the documentary resources, while the museum has the expertise in historic artifacts and, in particular, armaments. This collaborative effort will enhance the visibility of both institutions, and will offer a new way of looking at local history. I would like the Society to spearhead this effort, since we have already done the basic research, and we are working with the city to fill in some of the blanks.”
“What will it cost us?” someone from the other end of the table demanded.
“Very little, in fact. As I said, we’ve already done much of the basic research, and we wouldn’t be involved in any physical excavation. What I’m asking of you, the board, is to approve the staff’s efforts to serve as the public interpreter of the archeological evidence as it emerges, and to make our findings an effective teaching tool, drawing together the resources of multiple organizations within the city. We have the staff and the documentation at our disposal, but I’d like to see you support it with enthusiasm. You don’t have to vote today, if you choose not to, but the news is going to go viral very quickly, and I want us to take the lead.”
“Nothing like a pile of old bones to get people’s attention,” another member commented.
“That’s very true—particularly when there are over four hundred corpses. Yes, it’s a ghoulish fascination, but in this case it’s reality, and what happened in that neighborhood is a page of the city’s history, in more ways than one.”
The board chair, Lewis Howard, who had remained silent so far, spoke for the first time. “I suggest that we give our staff, including our president, the opportunity to engage in an exploratory phase of this investigation. If it pans out in, say, a couple of months, then we can authorize a fuller exploration. If necessary we can call a special meeting of the board. But as it stands, as of this moment, Ms. Pratt has presented us with an extraordinary opportunity, and we would be ignoring the Society’s fundamental mission if we failed to take advantage of it.”
“Thank you, Lewis. Do you wish to take a vote now?” I figured I might as well strike while the iron was hot.
The vote passed unanimously. We were adding bodies and cannons to the Society’s repertory.
The board meeting dissolved very quickly after that, but we’d given everyone something to think about, and I was encouraged by their initial reaction. I looked around at my partners in research. “Marty, Dylan, we have just changed a small piece of history. I vote we go out and celebrate.”
Marty smiled. “I second that motion.”
“All in favor?”
The vote was unanimous.
Postscript
I worked as a fund-raiser at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania—the model for Nell Pratt’s Society for the Preservation of Pennsylvania Antiquities in this series—for several years, and I was familiar with the parts of the city near the Delaware River (such as Second Street, which plays an important part in this story). Therefore I was surprised when I was doing some research on more recent events in Philadelphia (it’s been a while since I worked there) to read about the discovery of a long-abandoned cemetery in a part of town I thought I knew—and that it took place in 2017. I knew I had to make it a central part of this book.
That cemetery was closed in 1860, and it seems incredible that it was lost for so long, doesn’t it? And yes, there were over four hundred bodies left behind, under the paving. The discovery was widely covered in local news at the time. What’s more, it’s only one of the abandoned cemeteries in the city. And yes, the Historical Society does have a copy of the list of bodies buried in the lost cemetery.
But I also used some creative liberty by adding another discovery under an old building across the street from the site of that cemetery. That part of the story was inspired by Washington’s crossing the Delaware River on Christmas 1776 in order to attack the British forces at Trenton. It’s one of those stories that captures the imagination of schoolchildren, aided by the iconic image painted by Emanuel Leutze of Washington standing in a small boat as he and some of his men crossed the river, but it was a bit more complicated than just getting to the other side. There were thousands of American soldiers who made that crossing in small boats in a raging blizzard, surrounded by ice floes (and a lot of them were late to arrive)—and won the battle.
The mythology of the smugglers’ tunnels leading from the waterfront also survives today.
Philadelphia is a surprising mix of historic and modern elements, and it’s a pleasure to write about it. The Society (under whichever name) is an outstanding repository of historic research materials, and one of the best genealogy libraries in the country—well worth a visit if you’re putting together your family tree. And it seems there’s always something new to be found, even after centuries.
Books by Sheila Connolly
Orchard Mysteries
One Bad Apple
Rotten to the Core
Red Delicious Death
A Killer Crop
Bitter Harvest
Sour Apples
“Called Home”
Golden Malicious
Picked to Die
A Gala Event
Seeds of Deception
A Late Frost
Nipped in the Bud
Museum Mysteries
Fundraising the Dead
Let’s Play Dead
Fire Engine Dead
“Dead Letters”
Monument to th
e Dead
Razing the Dead
Privy to the Dead
Dead End Street
Digging Up History
Victorian Village Mysteries
Murder at the Mansion
County Cork Mysteries
Buried in a Bog
Scandal in Skibbereen
An Early Wake
A Turn for the Bad
Cruel Winter
Many a Twist
“Tied Up with a Bow”
The Lost Traveller
Relatively Dead Mysteries
Relatively Dead
Seeing the Dead
Defending the Dead
Watch for the Dead
Search for the Dead
Revealing the Dead
Glassblowing Mysteries
(Writing as Sarah Atwell)
Through a Glass, Deadly
Pane of Death
Snake in the Glass
Also Available
Reunion with Death
Once She Knew
About the Author
After collecting too many degrees and exploring careers ranging from art historian to investment banker to professional genealogist, Sheila Connolly began writing mysteries in 2001 and is now a full-time writer.
She wrote her first mystery series for Berkley Prime Crime under the name Sarah Atwell, and the first book, Through a Glass, Deadly, was nominated for an Agatha Award for Best First Novel.
Under her own name, her Orchard Mystery Series debuted with One Bad Apple and has been followed by twelve more books in the series.
Her Museum Mysteries, set in the Philadelphia museum community, opened with Fundraising the Dead and continued with eight more books.
Digging Up History Page 17