by Kat Ross
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.
“You look but you don’t see,” I said. “That’s what she told me. I had no idea then what she was talking about.”
Mrs. Rivers shook her head in a long-suffering way. “I tried to explain to her how inappropriate, even cruel, her lessons were. She just looked at me with those pale eyes. Then she said, ‘You don’t care if Harrison grows up to be a blind fool, but I do. She’s not as smart as me, but she’s not hopeless. There’s potential. I won’t see it wasted.’”
“Well, that sounds like Myrtle,” I said. “Even her compliments manage to somehow be insulting.”
“I tried to keep a closer eye on her after that. It took you weeks before you could sleep in your own bed again, even after she’d shown you how the tricks were accomplished. Of course, you followed her around more than ever. You seemed grimly determined to please her. And I’ll give her one thing. She never lied, not even when she should have. Myrtle didn’t understand social niceties.”
“Or didn’t care,” I said. “Well, I’m not doing this to gain her approval, if that’s what you mean. Once, I would have. But like Myrtle, I don’t care, not anymore.” The
lie came easily. “I’m doing it because I want to.”
And that was also the truth.
“Do you think you can solve it?” Mrs. Rivers asked.
The question surprised me. “Yes. Yes, I do. Given enough time. We’ve made progress in the last day. Something’s going to break, I can feel it.”
“Well, I’m afraid time is the one commodity you’re running short of, Harry,” Mrs. Rivers said. “More toast?”
“No, thank you. What does that mean?”
“I received a cable from your sister this morning.”
“Really? What did she say?” I rinsed my plate and tried to ignore the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.
“She concluded her work for the Pinkertons. There was a counterfeiting ring operating out of western Illinois and eastern Missouri. The Secret Service has known about it for years but they were very careful. No one could catch them at it.”
“But Myrtle did,” I said.
Of course she did. The poor things didn’t stand a chance.
“It’s in The New York Times. Front page, Saturday. She’s still seeing to a number of final details, but she expects to be home within four days.”
This was bad news indeed. I had no idea what she’d do if—when—she caught me impersonating her. There was a possibility she would find it funny. Myrtle was often amused by the most inexplicable things.
But there was a good chance she wouldn’t.
And frankly, Myrtle scared me.
“Four days?” I echoed, the plate forgotten in my hand.
“Within four days. So perhaps sooner. Do turn off the tap, Harry, you’re wasting water.”
“Right, sorry.” I obeyed, my hand moving like a mechanical claw.
“We’d better get busy then,” Mrs. Rivers said. “What’s the next step?”
I stared at her. “You’re not going to try to stop me?”
“Not in the least. I’m going to help you. I’ve been waiting years for someone to bring Myrtle down a notch or two. It’ll be good for the girl.” She rubbed her hands together in something very close to glee. “Don’t get me wrong. I love her. But…”
“I know,” I said. “I know exactly.”
Mrs. Rivers was very excited when I told her we were all going upstate to Cassadaga Lake to interview the dead medium’s sister. She said she would commence packing for both of us immediately, leaving me free to meet Nellie at Niblo’s Theatre. Connor would stay with Mrs. Rivers’ sister, Alice, who had a flat on Forty-Third Street. I didn’t want him sleeping in our house alone, and we needed him close by in case Billy turned up. Connor did tell me that some of Billy’s few possessions were discovered missing from the Butchers’ lair, implying that the boy had rabbited for some reason. It gave me hope that he was still alive, but I wondered what could have frightened him so much that he’d forgo the chance to earn $50.
In any event, things were looking up. Four days would be plenty of time, I told myself. Why, Myrtle had once solved the poisoning death of a zookeeper in sixteen minutes.
And yet it was with a quickened step that I made my way to Western Union to send a cable to Uncle Arthur. I told him about the third body and the possible society connection. I made sure to include the taunting message and strange fingerprints, as I knew it was the occult aspects of the case that most appealed to him, and which would pique the interest of the S.P.R.
That accomplished, and with an hour yet before I had to meet Nellie, I settled myself in the parlor and began to methodically go through the newspapers in search of any crimes that could be related to the case. I’d neglected this duty for several days, but it seems I hadn’t missed much. There was no mention at all of Raffaele Forsizi. Becky Rickard merited three quick updates, none more than a paragraph. All said essentially the same thing: the police were baffled. Anne Marlowe’s murder had occurred too late to make the presses, but I imagined it would be everywhere by tomorrow. An actress found strangled, even if she wasn’t a star, was the type of story that sold newspapers, and even the less sensational ones like the Times could hardly resist splashing it on the front page.
Then there was the usual array of garden variety crimes and human interest stories. A guest was robbed of his luggage at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. A woman killed her husband and sister after they ran off together to Jersey City. A fisherman caught a man-eating shark in the Hudson River at Cornwall, and some ten thousand people turned out for the final performance of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show at Erastina in Staten Island.
In more serious news, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton had electrified a large audience at Jamestown’s Allen Opera House on the topic of women’s right to vote, a volcano erupted in Japan, and General Sheridan was laid to rest at Arlington Cemetery.
I rubbed my eyes, still a bit bleary from lack of sleep.
Mors me solum potest prohibere.
Only death can stop me.
A far cry from God forgive me.
He was getting worse.
A tap at the window gave me a start.
My hand twitched towards the revolver on the table. I kept it always within reach now. But it was just a crow. A quite large one. It perched on the sill, its shiny doll’s eyes fixed on me. Then it pecked the window again.
“Hungry, are you?” I said. “No crumbs left from breakfast, I’m afraid.”
The crow just watched, still as a stone.
I liked birds. I thought they were beautiful, and despised people who kept them in cages. This one was a deep, glossy back, with a long, sharply pointed beak.
“Wait here,” I said.
I ran downstairs to the kitchen, where I found a crust in the garbage. I carried it up to the parlor, half expecting the crow to be gone. I’d never seen one around here before. Pigeons and sparrows by the boatload, and the occasional seagull, but never a crow.
It was still there. And it was still staring through the glass, at exactly the spot in the doorway where I’d appear.
I took a step into the room and stopped.
I knew I was being foolish. But there was something strange about it. About the way it sat there, so still. As though it had come here just for me.
It’s only a bird.
Myrtle would die of laughter if she could see me now, I thought. The great detective, jumping at her own shadow. Afraid to give a crust of bread to a starving crow. I forced my feet to move. Maybe it was someone’s pet that escaped. That’s why it’s not spooked by the fact that I’m walking towards it. That’s why it’s stepped closer to the window.
I reached for the sash and again, I hesitated, my fingers brushing the glass just inches from that curved beak. It was utterly irrational. But I had the sudden conviction that it would be a very bad mistake to open the window.
“Miss Pell?”
I nearly jumped out of my skin as a female voice called through the parlor door, accompanied by a light knock.
“Yes?”
“It’s Elizabeth Brady. I’m sorry to call without warning. But we must speak!”
My guilty conscience perked up immediately, wondering if my ruse had been discovered. But it wasn’t anger or accusation I heard in her voice. It was fear.
“Of course, do come in,” I said, quickly slipping the revolver into a drawer.
I was walking to the door when I remembered the crust in my hand. I turned back to the window.
The crow had vanished.
8
I settled Elizabeth into the armchair that John always favored to study his medical books, an overstuffed mountain of green plush that made its occupant look like Alice after she drank from the mysterious bottle. Or was it the cake? I could never remember. In any event, I was glad to see her, as I’d been wanting to speak with her myself.
Mrs. Brady was a handsome woman, with a wide, well-formed mouth and prominent cheekbones. She wore a rather austere dress of navy blue silk and her auburn hair was caught up in a small matching hat trimmed in maroon velvet. Her posture was composed, but the pa
leness of her skin and ragged fingernails told a different story. They had been chewed to the quick, a fact she tried to conceal by folding her hands in her lap.
“I’ll be frank, Miss Pell,” she said calmly. “My husband has no idea that I am here.”
“I understand,” I said. “I’ll hold this meeting in the strictest confidence.”
“Thank you. I would have come sooner but it was impossible to get away. Then, yesterday, Leland happened to mention what you found at Robert’s apartment—the ash. I knew I couldn’t wait any longer.”
“What is it?” I schooled my face to stillness, but my heart gave a little thump.
“About four months ago, I ran into Robert, purely by chance. I had gone shopping with some friends in the city. We went out to lunch afterwards, a place not far from here called Selari’s.”
“Yes, I know it.” Selari’s was a bohemian café at University Place and Tenth Street that Edward and his pals often frequented after the races.
“It was just a few weeks after the storm. We were sitting near the window when I saw Robert pass by. He looked like a ghost. I hadn’t seen him since the wedding, and he appeared much changed, but I knew it was him. I made some excuse to step outside and caught him a block away.” She took a deep breath. “Leland doesn’t know of our encounter, but only because Robert made me swear not to tell him. He was very distraught. I asked him what the matter was and he told me he had been wronged by a business partner.”
“I can’t say if he was intentionally wronged, but we did learn that he lost a good deal of money on the Exchange when it was shut down,” I said.
“Poor Robert.” Elizabeth picked at the seam of the chair’s arm. It was an unconscious compulsion, an outlet for her anxiety. I wondered what other destructive habits she had acquired.
“The ash?” I prompted.
“Yes, he was talking about this man and he complained that when they would meet at his office, he could hardly stand the stench. I asked what he meant, and he said the man reeked of cigarette smoke, which Robert could never abide.”