by Kat Ross
“By whom?”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.”
“Unacceptable, Miss Pell. You already work for us. It’s your duty—”
I took the folded paper out of my pocket and handed it to him. Kaylock read it in silence.
“A confidentiality agreement,” he said flatly. “Signed by you.”
“That’s correct, sir.”
“Does Mr. Weston know about this?”
“No, sir. He has nothing to do with it.”
Kaylock stared at me. “I see. And this private client of yours. Is he or she worth sacrificing both your career and reputation?”
I raised my chin. “That’s rather severe, sir. I already checked. There’s nothing in my contract with the S.P.R. that specifically says I can’t also work as an independent consultant. I’m willing to tell you all I can, as long as it won’t compromise the privacy of my client. Surely that counts for something. I have no intention of cutting out Miss Prince and Mr. Copperthwaite. I wish to cooperate as fully as I’m able.”
He stared at me stonily.
“I didn’t have to tell you at all, you know,” I added. “I could have just quietly taken the case. But I’m trying to do the right thing.”
Kaylock sighed. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Miss Pell. Don’t throw your future away. I might be indulgent of your eccentricities, but if Orpha Winter hears about this, she won’t be pleased. If she chooses to reprimand you, I would be hard-pressed to stop it.”
“Understood, Mr. Kaylock.”
He nodded. “As it happens, the other team is due to give me a progress report. You may wait in the parlor until they arrive.”
“Yes, sir.”
I spent the next hour listening to the monotonous ticking of the mantel clock and wondering what I had been thinking by taking this case in the first place. Orpha Winter, Mr. Kaylock’s co-vice president, was not a woman to cross lightly. John and I had enjoyed her good graces since we helped to solve the museum murders, but she was already predisposed to dislike me since I was hired by Mr. Kaylock and the two of them had been waging a quiet little war for years.
Mrs. Winter believed heart and soul in the spirit world, while Mr. Kaylock was an avowed skeptic. If she could use me to tarnish her rival’s reputation, Orpha might toss me to the wolves without a second thought.
Working as an investigator for the SPR had been my dream since childhood. Was I truly going to risk it all for James Moran?
I thought of the ruthless young scoundrel who preyed on his fellow citizens and the laughing boy in the picture at Cashel O’Sullivan’s house. It was hard to believe they were the same person.
But if I saved him, he would ensure no one ever harmed my sister again. The city’s most vicious criminals had little fear of the police, but they did fear James Moran.
I couldn’t tell Kaylock this, of course. But in the end, I knew I would pay the price for Myrtle, not Moran.
My thoughts turned back to the case. Daniel Cherney turned out to be a frightened young man with no real malice in his heart, but the killer targeting the Pythagoras Society was a different sort. I sensed a wicked hand at work, pulling strings in the shadows . . . .
“Harry?”
I looked up with a start. Kate Prince stood there with her partner, Wayne Copperthwaite.
“I’ve been waiting for you both,” I confessed, rising to my feet. “You’ll likely be angry at me, but I’ve taken on a private client connected to your case. I can’t tell you who it is, but I can share some information.”
The two looked at each other. “Angry?” Kate replied in a dry tone. “I’d say we’re overjoyed. This case has been at a standstill for days. If you know something useful, we’d be most appreciative.”
I sagged with relief. “Please tell Mr. Kaylock that. He’s quite put out with me.”
We entered his office and took seats in front of the desk. Kaylock looked at us each in turn in that schoolmaster way he had, though his gaze lingered on me the longest.
“You first, Miss Pell. I’m dying to hear what nuggets of gold you’ve extracted from the barren earth of this case.”
I refused to rise to the bait, smiling sweetly and launching into my recitation. How the victims knew they were being stalked by doubles. The curious twisting of fate in ways both good and bad that ultimately led to their tragic deaths. How it appeared that Cashel O’Sullivan had hung himself rather than suffer the same inevitable fate. I expressed the opinion that someone was in fact orchestrating the bizarre deaths through some kind of dark magic.
I left out any mention of James Moran or the Pythagoras Society.
Kate gave a thoughtful nod when I had finished talking. “Well, we had a visit from a medical student named Thaddeus Shaw this afternoon. He said he knew the victims well. He feared he might be next and gave us two names. Persons of interest who he claims were also close to the deceased.”
“Who?” Kaylock asked, leaning across his desk.
Kate glanced down at her notes. “Quincy Hughes and Joseph Allen White.” She watched me closely. “Ring any bells, Harry?”
“I’ve heard the names mentioned,” I said carefully.
“In what context?” Mr. Kaylock demanded.
“I’m afraid I can’t say. It would compromise my client.”
He made a noise of irritation.
“But I promise, if I had any real dirt on either of them, I’d give it to you.”
Kaylock sighed. “Continue, Miss Prince.”
She nodded at Wayne, who took up the thread.
“Actually, I’m the one who interviewed him. He singled out Quincy Hughes in particular. Mr. Shaw seems to believe Hughes has reason to regret their former association and might be willing to kill to cover it up.”
“Some embarrassing secret, you mean?” I asked with a frown. Moran had never mentioned anything like that.
“He implied as much, but clammed up when we pressed for details,” Wayne said. “And frankly, he was an odd one himself. We’re looking into all three of them now.”
I wondered if the Pythagoras Society was really as innocent as my client claimed. It was also interesting that Thaddeus left Moran out of it. Fear? Or something else?
Kate gave me a thin smile, as if she knew I was holding back and understood my reasons. “We’ve already done some digging through the victims’ lives to figure out if they had any enemies. None were as squeaky clean as they first seemed. Cherney had a loud row with another student a few weeks before he died, claimed the boy cheated off him during a test. It nearly came to blows. O’Sullivan was in a simmering feud with one of the other stagehands. And Bates had a reputation for poaching other men’s paramours.”
“But none of them had any enemies in common,” Wayne said glumly. “Not a single one.”
We kicked around ideas for a while more. By the time I left, the case felt muddier than ever. I’d promised Moran to fill him in on my meeting at Pearl Street, but I had a more pressing errand first.
I took the Third Avenue elevated to Forty-Second Street and walked north up Madison Avenue to Columbia. I knew the buildings of the medical college well and inquiries soon led me to an empty classroom where John was diligently piecing together a skeleton with bits of wire.
“Harry,” he murmured, without looking up. “Would you hand me that tibia?”
I passed him the leg bone and sank into a wooden chair with an attached desk.
“I saw it,” I said.
That got his attention. “Moran’s double?”
“We were crossing Central Park. I saw it clear as day, John. It looked right at me.” I suppressed a shudder. “I chased it, but it disappeared. Then Moran nearly got run over by a carriage. The horse was stung by a bee and bolted.”
“Crikey.” He sorted through a pile of what looked like toes. “Where are you, my lovely little metatarsal?” he sang.
“Over there?” I pointed helpfully.
“No, that’s the distal. I want the prox
imal . . . . Ah, here she is.” He returned to his labors, his hair falling rather fetchingly over one eye.
“Then I went to Moran’s house and met his mother. She’s quite a piece of work, John. A laudanum addict, unless I miss my guess.”
“It’s not uncommon,” he replied. “Doctors prescribe it for everything from insomnia to cough. Half the patent medicines have it.”
“Well, I thought she was in a hopeless fog at first, but then I wondered if it might not be an act, at least partly.” I bit my lip in consternation. “I can’t quite get a handle on her.”
“The poor woman has been through a great deal in the last few years.”
“I suppose so. Then Emmeline Bayard came in.”
“The aunt?” John prompted.
“Yes. She hauled Moran off to the kitchen to fetch a glass of milk, though why it required the two of them, I can’t say. There’s something off about her. I’d swear she has affection for Moran that borders on the . . . how shall I put it? The improper.”
John laughed. “I wouldn’t expect any less from his charming family.”
I quickly summarized the rest of my afternoon and John listened without interrupting. It was one of his finer qualities.
“I’ll be lucky if Kaylock doesn’t sack me, but at least Kate and Wayne didn’t seem to mind. And don’t worry, I kept you out of it.”
John frowned. “You didn’t have to.”
“I know. But then at least one of us will still have a foot in the door at Pearl Street if it all goes south.”
“Hmmm. Would you like to know what I’ve found out?” he asked.
“Very much.”
He couldn’t resist a trace of smugness. “I know what it is, Harry.”
I leaned forward. “Do tell, Weston.”
John set the bones down. He dropped his voice and waggled his eyebrows suggestively. “What will you give me—”
“Oh, for God’s sake, just spit it out!” I exclaimed.
John’s smile widened. When he still hesitated, I grabbed a sturdy femur from the table and brandished it threateningly. John laughed and held his hands up in surrender.
“Now, now, no need to get violent. The creature we’re hunting is called a doppelgänger.”
I frowned. “Sounds German.”
“It is. The word means double walker. According to legend, they cast no reflection in a mirror or in water. They’re like a . . . a shadow twin.”
I glanced at the grinning skull on the table. “That’s decidedly creepy, John.”
“Isn’t it? There are various stories of doppelgängers appearing, but I found only one in which such an entity was deliberately summoned. It’s mentioned in The Night-Side of Nature.”
I was familiar with the book. Authored by the English novelist Catherine Crowe, it purported to be a scientific exploration of ghosts and psychic phenomena. She had a special reverence for German mystics, and though the book was nearly half a century old, it remained popular with spiritualists and other students of the occult.
“A single cryptic reference.” John took a copy from his satchel and leafed through it until he found the right page. “Franz von Baader says that some chap named Eckartshausen quote, unquote, assured him that he possessed the power of making a person’s double or wraith appear, while his body lay elsewhere in a state of trance or catalepsy. He added that the experiment might be dangerous, if care were not taken to prevent intercepting the rapport of the ethereal form with the material one.” John shut the book. “Which implies that it can be done.”
I considered this. “Only in this case, the victims weren’t in a trance. They were on the other side of town doing things. Witnesses saw them.”
“But it can be done,” John persisted.
I nodded. “Yes, that’s definitely valuable.”
He gave me a shrewd look. “You must have some dark horses in the running, Harry. Let’s hear them.”
“I don’t, actually,” I admitted. “Kate and Wayne implied there could be some hidden hand targeting the Society, but none of them have any enemies in common. It’s just a hunch, but I don’t think Moran’s hiding a diabolical secret related to the club. If he knew the reason, he would never have hired us in the first place.” I sighed. “The crux of it seems to be the modus operandi. Why a doppelgänger?”
“Because they’re terrifying,” John muttered.
“That’s what I think, too.”
“What scared you the most as a child?” he asked.
I knew the answer immediately, as I suspect most people do. “Ghosts that come out of your mouth. Ectoplasm.”
John cast me a sympathetic look. “Did Myrtle have anything to do with that?”
I laughed uneasily. The memory still frightened me a little, though I knew I couldn’t trust it. “She was trying to teach me a lesson about observation, but I was too young to understand. How about you?”
“Tree people,” John said. He had moved on to the skeleton’s arms, his fingers deftly twisting the wires.
I frowned. “Tree people?”
“Andy told me about them when I was four or five.” Andy was John’s older brother. “We were visiting cousins at their farm upstate and he said I had better watch out because one of the nearby towns had disappeared overnight. The trees crept up and strangled everyone while they were sleeping.”
“Oh, that’s a bad one.”
“You’ve no idea. He said that when some traveling peddlers came along the road, they found the whole village overgrown as if it had been abandoned for a hundred years, except that there were rotting corpses stuck in the brambles and hanging by the ankles from a jungle of vines.” John chuckled, but it was a haunted sound. “A branch kept scraping the window of the room we were in that night and I nearly died from fear.” He shook his head. “Monsters are born in childhood, aren’t they, Harry? And the part of us that believes never grows up. Not really.”
“It cuts both ways,” I pointed out. “Danny Cherney summoned a monster to protect himself, though it didn’t work.”
“I wonder what might have happened if he had given it proper instructions? If he’d been sober enough to think it through?”
I smiled faintly. “A bare-knuckle match between a golem and a doppelgänger?”
“Why not?” John sighed. “Though we’ll never know now.”
I watched him work in silence for a minute. That ticklish feeling was back; the conviction that we were close to something important. “So if you wanted to kill someone in the worst way possible, you’d choose the tree people?” I asked.
“I can’t imagine hating anyone that much,” John replied. “But for the sake of argument, yes, that’s what I would choose.”
He finished the left foot and moved on to the right, his hands moving swiftly now that he knew the correct sequence of bones. “Here’s a thought,” he said absently. “What if the killer – we’ll call him a killer even though the deaths are all chalked up to accidents – what if the killer only wanted one of them dead?”
John had just put his finger on a feeling I had but couldn’t quite explain. “Keep talking,” I said.
“Like you say, the whole thing is cold-blooded, Harry. Such a person might not care about killing innocents. The ends would justify the means, wouldn’t they?”
I nodded slowly. “It fits better than anything else.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” he said happily. “So then all we have to do is figure out which target was the true target, and we’re closing in on our killer. Of course, proving it will be something else, but I’d call that progress.”
My mind was already racing ahead. “The deaths are following the order of the signatures on the club charter. So to get to the one the killer really wanted, they’d have to go through the early ones first.”
“Right. Or it was one of the first ones and the rest were killed to throw us off the scent.”
“No. I don’t think so.” I looked at John. “The obvious target is Moran. He has an army of enem
ies.”
John scratched his head. “True. Which makes it harder. If so many people want him dead, how do we find out which one it is?”
“Again, the modus operandi,” I replied. “Would a street thug really use black magic to kill him?”
“Probably not,” John conceded. “So who does that leave?”
“Who, indeed,” I murmured. “I wish you’d been at his house with me. There’s something off in that family.”
“But why would his own mother want to kill him? Or his aunt for that matter?”
“I don’t know. But I intend to find out.”
John crowed with satisfaction as he attached the skull to the spinal column and stood back. “What do you think, Harry?”
“I think you’ll ace your anatomy examination,” I told him fondly.
“Assuming all hell hasn’t broken loose, I’ll take you to dinner tomorrow night at Seighortner’s. Consider it a rain check for your birthday dinner.” He gave me a heavy-lidded look. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten. You still owe me a kiss.”
I rose up on my tiptoes and pressed my lips to his cheek.
John’s eyes narrowed. “Oh no, Harry. That doesn’t count. That was sisterly.”
I grinned. “I still owe you, Weston, but that one was for something else.”
“What?” He placed the skeleton back on the table and began the laborious process of taking it apart again.
“For cracking the case.”
“Really? But I didn’t— Where are you going?”
“To check on Myrtle and have a think,” I replied with a smile. “Seven o’clock tomorrow?”
“I’ll make a reservation.”
I thought briefly of my promise to Moran, but he’d have to wait. It was too late to call without arousing suspicion in the household. So I caught a dirty, overcrowded street car down Sixth Avenue to Tenth Street, my mind picking over the revelations of that long day.
Mince pies were cooling on the kitchen counter and my stomach gave a loud grumble. I’d missed lunch and supper, too. Mrs. Rivers was humming a tune as she catalogued a pharmacopeia of pills, powders, tonics and ointments. I squinted at the colorful labels.
Dalley’s Magical Pain Extractor