by Kat Ross
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 seemed 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).
“Lost time,” I said.
“What?”
“It’s one of the principal symptoms. The sufferer experiences lost time. They may find themselves in places with no recollection of how they got there, or simply awaken from a fugue state with hours having passed.”
“That happened to me just the other day,” Connor said. “Course it was after a few of the lads nicked a bottle of the old Rattle-Skull from a drunk on the Bowery…”
I opened my mouth to lecture the boy on the evils of liquor in general, and Rattle-Skull (whatever that was) in particular, but John rode right over me.
“If the two murders are related, and I’m still not sure they are, it’s conceivable that he doesn’t know he’s doing it,” he said. “Or he wakes up after the deed is done and feels compelled to metaphorically hide his actions by covering the face. We should ask Brady if Straker had any history of lost time.”
“Yes. And I have another question for my client.” I tried, unsuccessfully, to suppress the glee in my voice. I’d been saving the best for last.
John’s
eyes narrowed. “What is it, Harry?”
“I’m just wondering what happened to Straker’s things from the army,” I said, as Mrs. Rivers bustled in with a steaming mug that she pressed into my hands. “Thank you.”
“Of course, dear.”
I took a sip and waited for her to leave.
“Because what? Oh, do get on with it!” John exclaimed.
“Because,” I said, “what Fred told me, but that hasn’t been reported yet, is that something was found just next to the body, as if it had fallen from the boy’s hand: the button from a soldier’s uniform!”
4
John was intrigued when I told him this, but it didn’t have quite the dramatic effect I was hoping for. As much as he enjoyed tales of the supernatural, he had a strong pragmatic side as well and insisted that it really didn’t prove a thing. In fact, in his view, it made it less likely that Straker was involved, in the Union Square killing at least. Should we not consider the simplest explanation: that it was someone actively serving in the military? Multiple personality disorder was certainly a sensational explanation, John argued, but it was also extremely rare, with less than a hundred reported cases in the world. And while a few patients, including Vivet, had alter egos that were impulsive and even criminal, none had committed murder.
There was also the ash to consider. Without doubt, a second person had been in Straker’s flat. And the strange symbol burned into the grass, which resembled a capital X alongside a number four, with a short line drawn through the slanting part of the four. I showed it to John and Connor, but it meant nothing to them either.
We ate supper and batted some ideas around for a while, most of them pure speculation. As I’d hoped, Connor was more than willing to offer his assistance. He seemed happy to have a new case to puzzle over, and it dawned on me that he had been just as bored as I was with Myrtle gone. He’d gotten used to a life of adventure and intrigue, and thought it hilarious that I was pretending to be the Great Detective.
A little too hilarious.
“Alright,” I said crossly, as he rolled on the floor, clutching his sides. “It’s not that funny.”
“No offense, Harry,” he groaned, catching his breath. “But if Myrtle catches you…I hear there’s a ship leaving for Brazil from Pier Twenty-Nine next week. You might want to start packing your—”
Connor let out a whoosh of air as I whacked him in the head with a pillow. John, who had loyally kept a straight face until this point, finally crumbled, and I was forced to threaten him with the pillow as well, which only made them both worse.
Then Mrs. Rivers burst in demanding to know what all the racket was about, and even I succumbed to a fit of the giggles.
“You’re daft, the lot of you!” she exclaimed. “And it’s nine o’clock. Time for John to go home, and young Connor to brush his teeth.”
This brought a chorus of hisses and boos from “Young Connor,” mostly under his breath. As much as he complained about Mrs. Rivers, he didn’t dare to openly defy her.
The two of them acted like mortal enemies, but it was thanks to her that he was fed and clothed and had a place to sleep at night (the spare bedroom in the attic). I doubt it would even have occurred to Myrtle to do more than give him a few coins for his services, but once Mrs. Rivers had ascertained that Connor quite literally had no one and nowhere to go, she insisted that we take him in. My mother was hesitant. “Isn’t the boy a professional thief?” she’d asked diffidently. But Mrs. Rivers had been adamant and Connor was wise enough to recognize a good thing when he found one. Four months later, the silverware was still intact, although I’d caught him eyeing it longingly on a few occasions and from his mutterings I gathered that he’d already priced the contents of the entire house down to the penny.
“Sorry, Harry, force of habit,” he’d responded when I’d found him in the dining room one day, admiring a gold-filigreed serving tray. “A man’s got to keep in practice or his skills get rusty!”
So in theory, Connor was reformed. But I had a feeling his extracurricular activities remained unsavoury, to put it mildly.
We walked John to the door. His assignment for the next day was to visit the Hell’s Kitchen address Fred had given me for the Forsizi family and find out all he could about Raffaele’s habits and his final hours. Connor would keep combing the streets for Straker. He seemed confident that if the man was lying low in a cheap boarding house or fleabag hotel, the Bank Street Butchers would cross his path eventually. As for myself, I would go to see Brady, and then pop over to the Astor Library to ask if anyone there was familiar with the symbol.
We said goodnight and Connor succumbed to the gruff mothering of our housekeeper, which I don’t think he minded half as much as he claimed. It was a lovely night, warm and with a faint glow lingering in the sky over the Hudson. I stood in the doorway as John walked away backwards, giving me a final wave before turning east for home.
He lived on Gramercy Park with so many brothers that he claimed the only peace he ever got was at my house. As the youngest, he’d led a rough and tumble childhood, and I think his brothers were the chief reason he’d so enthusiastically embraced boxing. In lieu of bare knuckles, the boys sometimes wore ladies’ lace gloves, which I thought ridiculous and told him so. I also told him that I’d inform his parents (his father was a district court judge) if he didn’t teach me the pugilistic arts.
“That’s blackmail, plain and simple!” he’d objected. “Plus you’re a lady.”
This was when we were both fifteen.
I’d promptly punched him in the nose, which silenced his objections.
So John taught me to box, although he insisted we wear the padded gloves mandated by the Queensberry Rules and, despite my vocal complaints, refused to hit me in the face.
Anyway, since he’d gained early admission to medical college the previous fall, John was spending more and more time at Tenth Street. I think it was the only place he could get any studying done. Fortunately, it was summer and classes didn’t begin for another month. With any luck, the case would be wrapped up well before then.
Because the truth was, I needed his help. Badly.
Oh, I was clever. In fact, in any other family, I’d be considered the brainy one. And thanks to my persistent nagging, Myrtle had taught me some of her craft. But I lacked practical experience and I knew it. If I failed, I’d have more than my new clients to answer to. I very much doubted that my sister would take kindly to my impersonation. Our parents, despite their thoroughly modern view of women’s place in the world, might do something rash like refuse to leave me at home again. My mother thought I should enroll in Vassar or Wellesley, but I chafed at the thought of spending all day in a stuffy classroom listening to the droning of an elderly professor. I wanted to be in the thick of things, pitting my wits against an adversary, as Myrtle did. So I had followed her lead and set a course of self-study that focused exclusively on subjects relevant to forensic science, such as chemistry, anatomy, and the rich and bountiful history of crime in the city. I had a decent store of theoretical knowledge, although it had never been put to the test until now.
All of these things worried me. But they weren’t what kept me awake that night.
I lay in bed for a long time studying the photograph of Leland Brady and Robert Aaron Straker in Wyoming. They seemed so young, more boys than men. Brady was looking directly at the camera, but Straker stared off into the middle distance, as though his mind were elsewhere. Perhaps it was my imagination, but his gaze had a certain hollow, empty quality. I wondered if it was taken before or after the Rock Springs massacre.
They both wore dark single-breasted uniforms with five brass buttons down the front and colored piping on each cuff. I couldn’t help staring at Straker’s buttons in morbid fascination. Had one of them been seized by the Forsizi boy in his final death throes?
As I tossed and turned, visions of Becky Rickard morphing into the strangled corpse of the child organ grinder, I feared that one thing was c
ertain. If we didn’t stop it, there would be more to come.
Straight after breakfast, I took a trolley downtown to Brady’s office at 90-94 Maiden Lane, two blocks from the controlled frenzy of the New York Stock Exchange. Harding & White occupied the top two floors of a handsome cast-iron building built for an investment banking firm. The rest of the narrow, curving street was devoted to retail stores advertising watches, chains and engagement rings. As one of the first streets to be illuminated with gas lamps, Maiden Lane had become popular with evening shoppers, and was now the center of the city’s jewellery district.
A young secretary escorted me into Brady’s small but tastefully furnished office, where my client was sorting through a stack of documents. Several large maps of Manhattan and Brooklyn were pinned to the wall behind him, next to a gleaming wooden telephone. I admired it with envy; my parents’ modern sensibilities didn’t extend to what they considered frivolous inventions whose sole purpose was to promote idle rumor and gossip.
“Miss Pell!” Brady looked up with a strained smile. He wore a light linen suit that was already hopelessly wrinkled from the humidity, and dark half-circles shadowed his light blue eyes. “Do you have news to report?” He gestured to a couch near the window. “Please, sit down.”
I placed my hat on the couch but remained standing. “I won’t be long, Mr. Brady. There have been some developments that you might be able to shed further light on.”
I gave him a summary of what we’d learned from Nellie and Fred, except for certain details, like the bit about the button. At the mention of a second body, Brady paled.
“Do you really think it’s connected?” he asked.
“Yes, I do. This symbol was found burned into the grass near the body.” I showed him the paper. “Do you recognize it?”
Brady examined it closely and shook his head. “I’m sorry, no.”
“You didn’t see it anywhere at the séance? On the floor, perhaps? Or the table?”