The Alchemy of Murder

by Carol McCleary

I began by telling Mrs. Stanard that all of the women in the room “looked loony and I was afraid of them.”

  NELLIE IN THE HANDS OF POLICE WITH MRS. CAINE

  Throughout the night I kept up the pretense that I believed everyone in the house was “nuts” and I was going to be murdered by them. Feigning amnesia, I frightened the whole household and tortured my roommate, Mrs. Ruth Caine, with my paranoid delusions. The dear soul tried to calm me as I paced back and forth.

  The next morning Mrs. Caine, who barely slept, told me one of the ladies had a nightmare of me rushing at her with a knife. And Mrs. Stanard left the house immediately upon rising to obtain policemen to have me removed.

  When she returned with the two large policemen, she asked them to take me “quietly” in order to keep from making a scandal before the neighbors. “If she doesn’t come along quietly,” responded an officer, “I’ll drag her through the streets.”

  After being processed at the station house, I appeared in court before Judge Duffy. I gave the pretense that I was Cuban. Having learned a good bit of Spanish in Mexico, I threw around enough “Sí, Señors” to sound convincing.

  Being told about my strange behavior and amnesia, Judge Duffy said, “Poor child, she is well dressed and a lady. Her English is perfect and I would stake everything on her being a good girl. I’m positive she is somebody’s darling.”

  Everyone laughed and I had to put a handkerchief over my face to choke my own laughter.

  “I’m sure she’s some woman’s darling,” hastily amended the judge. He suspected that I’d been drugged.

  Dear Mrs. Caine pleaded not to have me sent to “the Island” (exactly where I wanted to go) because I would be killed there. The judge decided to send me to Bellevue for the “drugs” to wear off.

  A crowd of curious onlookers gathered to see the “crazy girl” in the police ambulance. The doctor dropped the wagon’s curtains as a group of children, mudlarks, raced after us trying to get a look at me as they shouted all sorts of vulgar taunts.

  At Bellevue the order was given to take me to the insanity ward. A muscular man grabbed me so tight I lost my composure and shook him off with more strength than I realized I had. Seeing my distress, the ambulance doctor interceded and escorted me to the mad ward. Once there I was examined by another doctor who, after a short discourse with me, announced to the nurse, “She’s positively demented, a hopeless case.”

  BEFORE JUDGE DUFFY

  My “amnesia” case created something of a sensation at Bellevue and soon the worst possible thing occurred: newspaper reporters were permitted in to question me and my picture appeared in the papers!

  Desperate to get to Blackwell’s Island before the reporters saw through my act, I eagerly convinced two more doctors I was “hopeless.” They removed me from the ward and took me to a city wharf where about a dozen women waited to be put onto a boat.

  An attendant with rough manners and whiskey breath half-dragged us onto the boat. It seemed as if we were forever on this bumpy boat ride before we were taken ashore at a landing in New York’s East River.

  “What is this place?” I asked an attendant who had his fingers dug deep into the flesh of my arm.

  “Blackwell’s Island,” he grinned, “a place you’ll never get off.”

  THE INSANE ASYLUM

  6

  Blackwell’s Island

  The name alone sounded depressing.

  The small island was grey and gloomy on the chilly day I set foot on it. About a mile and a half long and only an eighth of a mile wide, it sat like a stepping stone in the East River between the boroughs of Manhattan and Queens. Unless you were a competitive swimmer, it was too far to swim back to land.

  If I wasn’t already quite mad when I arrived, keeping my sanity in the face of conditions that have been frowned upon even at London’s notorious Bedlam quickly became a challenge.

  AN INSANITY EXPERT AT WORK

  The reception area was a long, narrow, austere room with bare concrete walls and barred windows. Nurses sat at a large table covered with a white bedspread in the center of the room. “Checking in” began immediately.

  “Come here,” a scowling, red-faced woman at the table snapped at me.

  I approached and was immediately assaulted with one rude question after another. The woman didn’t bother to look up as she penciled my answers on a sheet.

  “What have you on?”

  “My clothing.”

  Another nurse lifted my dress and slips as if I were a child. “One pair of shoes, one pair of stockings, one cloth dress, one straw sailor hat,” and so on. When the examination was over, someone yelled, “Into the hall, into the hall.”

  A kindly grey-haired patient told me that this was an invitation to supper.

  “Get in line, two-by-two,” “Stand still,” “How many times must I tell you to stay in line?” As the orders were snapped, a shove and a push were administered, often accompanied with a slap on the ear.

  We lined up in a hallway where open windows invited a cold draft. The shivering, thinly clad women looked lost and forlorn. Some chattered nonsense to invisible people; others laughed or cried.

  The grey-haired woman who had been kind nudged me. With sage nods and pitiful uplifting of her eyes, she assured me that I shouldn’t mind the poor creatures because they were all mad. “I’ve been here before, you know,” she said. She volunteered earlier that this was her second commitment to the island. Her daughter had managed to get her released but her son-in-law had her recommitted.

  When the dining room doors opened a mad rush was made for the tables. Food was already set out for each person—a bowl filled with a pinkish liquid which the patients called tea, a piece of thick-cut, buttered bread, and a saucer with five prunes.

  A large, heavy-set woman pushed by me and sat down. She immediately grabbed saucers from other place settings and emptied the contents in one long gulp while holding down her own bowl. Then proceeded to empty two more. As I watched, the woman opposite me grabbed my bread.

  The older woman with me offered me hers, but I declined and asked an attendant for another. The attendant glared at me as she flung a piece of bread on the table. “I see you’ve lost your memory, but not how to eat.”

  The bread was hard and dry, the butter rancid. One taste of the “tea” was enough—a bitter, mineral favor, as if it had been made in copper.

  “You must force down the food,” my new friend said. “If you don’t eat you’ll be sick and who knows, with these surroundings, you may go crazy.”

  “It’s impossible to eat this swill.” Despite her urging, I ate nothing.

  After dinner we were marched into a cold, wet concrete bathroom and ordered to undress. A patient chattering and chuckling to herself stood by the bathtub with a large, discolored rag in hand.

  I refused to undress. “It’s too cold.”

  Nurse Grupe, whose name tag said she was the head nurse, ordered me to undress.

  “No. Heat this place first.”

  She glared at me and I almost obeyed. What a poisonous disposition.

  “Undress her.”

  Nurses grabbed me, pulled off my clothes, and forced me into the tub. As I shivered in the cold water, the babbling woman scrubbed me with harsh soap that rubbed my skin raw. “Rub, rub, rub,” she chanted.

  My teeth chattered and my lips turned blue as buckets of cold water went over my head. I yelped and Nurse Grupe slapped the back of the head.

  “Shut up or I’ll give you something to yell about.”

  While I was still dripping wet, they put me into a short canton flannel slip labeled across the back in large black letters, Lunatic Asylum, B. I. H. 6. The letters stood for Blackwell’s Island, Hall 6.

  As I was led away I looked back and saw Miss Maynard, a poor, sick girl I’d met on the boat to the island. She pleaded not to be placed in the cold bath. It was useless, of course. Resistance simply inflamed Nurse Grupe’s poisonous personality.

  I was taken
to room 28 where a hard cot and coarse wool blanket awaited.

  My wet clothes and body dampened the pillow and sheet. I tried to find some warmth with the blanket, but when I lifted it up to my chin it left my bare feet exposed.

  As I lay shivering, I heard a rustle to my left. A girl sat on a bed in the dark corner. She came over and tucked another blanket around me. I was too weak and cold to even properly thank her and just muttered my gratitude.

  In the morning I discovered that each patient was rationed only one blanket. The girl spent a cold night so I could have her blanket.

  Her name was Josephine.

  She was a prostitute, but reminded me of a little mudlark. Seventeen years old, she’d left a hungry, abusive home at eleven and did the only work she could find—selling her body on the streets. Despite the unspeakable life she’d suffered, she still reached out to the underdog.

  This tarnished angel and I soon became as close as sisters.

  I couldn’t help but notice that nothing about her indicated she belonged in a mad house. “Why are you here?” I finally asked.

  “I was brought to the island suffering from a brain fever. I suppose I showed signs of insanity, but that left with the fever. Now I’m a prisoner. Few without family or friends ever leave this place.”

  I hated the thought that she believed she’d never get out, so I confided in her. “Very soon you’re going to be leaving the asylum with me. I can provide a home and help you get work. You won’t have to go back to the streets again. Life will be much kinder to you, I promise.”

  The poor dear thought I was mad! I wanted to tell her I was a reporter doing a story, but couldn’t chance my identity being revealed.

  Gossiping with inmates, I found out that the asylum’s darkest secret wasn’t the cruelty toward helpless women, a horrible crime in itself, but the mysterious disappearance of inmates. Four women had disappeared from the island in the previous five months and the staff never spoke of it.

  “They don’t care,” Josephine told me. “Women throw themselves into the river or drown trying to escape.”

  My interest was piqued by the fact all four women were prostitutes—an unusual coincidence being that street girls only made up a small portion of the inmates. I quietly probed to get more information and soon found out no one wanted to talk about it—the patients were frightened and the nurses wanted to avoid scandal.

  I was sitting on my cot making a mental list of the appalling things about the institution that I planned to write about when Josephine returned excited from a medical appointment.

  She sat down beside me and whispered, “I’ve found a way to get us off the island.”

  Her appointment had been with a staff doctor named Blum. He told her if she helped him with an experiment, he’d see that she gained her freedom. “I said I’d do it only if you were released, too.”

  “What kind of experiment?” My first instinct was that the doctor wanted sexual gratifiction.

  “I don’t know. It has to do with a scientific study. He has a lab with equipment in that shack on the old pier.”

  I realized I’d seen him on the hospital grounds. He wore baggy clothes and a box hat and had a heavy beard, long hair, and thick glasses. I overheard the nurses refer to him as “the German doctor” because of his thick Eastern European accent. He had a reputation for being a loner and secretive, which wasn’t surprising. Many ordinary doctors tinkered with scientific experiments, hoping to achieve the fame a few had managed by making important discoveries.

  “I heard nurses talking about him,” I said. “He’s an odd fellow who doesn’t say a word unless absolutely necessary. And he won’t let anyone near that shack of his. Nurse Grupe went out to deliver a package and he ran her off.”

  “He seems a gentleman to me,” Josephine said. “I’m sure it will all work out.” She nervously worked the ring on her index finger. A cheap copper band with a small heart, the ring had been given to her by a man she loved—and who abandoned her after he tired of exploiting her body.

  Seeing her so excited about getting off the island, I didn’t want to dampen her enthusiasm. She was usually dispirited and melancholy.

  “I’m sure it will. What exactly does he want you to do?”

  “Tonight at midnight I’m to tell the attendant that I have stomach pain and need to go to the infirmary, that I’ve been under Dr. Blum’s care. I’m to go to his quarters instead.” She squeezed my arm. “Nellie, I promised I wouldn’t tell a soul. You won’t tell anyone, will you? Promise?”

  It occurred to me that there might be another story in this for my article. If the man did plan to extort sexual favors from her, I’d see that he neither succeeded nor used his position to take advantage of any more poor women at the institute.

  “I promise. But don’t be surprised if you look behind you tonight and see me.”

  * * *

  THAT NIGHT I was dozing when Josephine got up to go to the doctor’s quarters. “Good luck,” I whispered as she went out the door.

  I waited a few minutes to give her a head start before quickly dressing and hurrying to the attendant’s station to use the same stomach pain excuse Josephine used. We were locked in at night as if we were prisoners.

  When I came out into the reception area, the night attendant wasn’t there. No! I should have left at the same time as Josephine. I hadn’t because I was sure the attendant wouldn’t let us leave together. I heard snoring and spotted the crazy old rub-rub-rub woman sleeping, sitting up on a bench. She was covered with a blanket. Poor thing. She probably came out of the wardroom to escape whatever devils came for her in the dark.

  I sat down, crossed my arms and tapped my foot and tried to will the attendant to return and let me out. I should have anticipated this—the attendants left their boring night duties to smoke, play cards, and heaven only knows what else.

  As the minutes ticked away, my patience evaporated. Staring at the door as I paced back and forth, I was ready to attack the iron door with my feet and fists.

  The old woman came awake and stared at me.

  “I need to get out of here,” I told her, as if she had the key. I patted my stomach. “Stomachache. Have to see Doctor Blum.”

  She shook her head, rocking back and forth. “Rub-rub-rub, Doctor Blum, rub-rub-rub.”

  I ignored her and went back to pacing.

  “Doctor Blum puts in the water. Rub-rub-rub.”

  I froze and stared at her. “What are you saying?”

  She stopped rocking and stared at me, suddenly fearful. I took a deep breath and smiled. I didn’t want to frighten her away. “Tell me,” I said, quietly, “who does Dr. Blum put in water?”

  She rocked and chanted. “Rub-rub-rub, rub-rub-rub, in the water, he puts them in the water.”

  I’d seen her stop the nonsense when Nurse Grupe snapped at her and I did it now. “Stop it! Look at me.”

  She stared at me with wide eyes.

  “Now tell me … who does he put in water?”

  She looked around and then leaned forward and spoke in a stage whisper. “The women. He puts them in the water at night. Rub-rub-rub.”

  “Stop that. Tell me—”

  She flew off the bench and ran back down the hall to the wardroom.

  I stood perfectly still, my whole body turning cold, fear crawling on my flesh. Water. Women. Dr. Blum. Had the old woman seen the enigmatic Dr. Blum putting the bodies of women in water?

  The door opened and the attendant stepped in. I flew by her, clutching at my stomach. “Pain. Doctor Blum knows.”

  I hurried in the direction of the infirmary. When I heard the door slam behind me, I veered and ran for the old pier in a panic. My rational mind told me my paranoia was nonsense, that I was panicking for nothing, but I couldn’t shake the feeling of dread. When the old woman had chanted about Blum and water it raised the hair on the back of my neck—not a good sign.

  I admit that I’m not the most book-learned person in the world. But if anythin
g, I had good instincts. My brain sometimes failed me but my intuition never did. And my guts were tied in knots thinking about Josephine alone with Dr. Blum.

  A rack at the pier entrance held wooden pins that sailors used to tie down lines—when they weren’t using them to crack heads during drunken brawls. I grabbed one.

  I’d never been on the pier but had walked by it many times. Dry-rotted, the jetty and building on it looked ready to be washed away in a good storm. I was told that Blum used half of the building as his personal quarters while the other half stored kerosene for the asylum. The only light I saw at the shack was a dim lamplight that shone through a cloth curtain at a window to the right of the front door.

  I broke my frantic momentum down to a slow walk as I came to the shack. Now what? Should I knock on the door and ask sweetly to see Josephine while I held a wooden club in my hand?

  What if the doctor really was doing an innocuous experiment … and I spoiled Josephine’s chance to get off the island? I couldn’t guarantee that I’d be able to get her off the island even if Mr. Pulitzer liked my story … but a doctor could.

  I stopped and stared at the old wood building. I needed to look through a window. Both windows facing the jetty were curtained. A narrow ledge no more than a foot wide ran along the river side. Walking by in the daytime, I’d seen a window and a door in the back. I didn’t know if the window had closed curtains. The only way to find out was to get a closer look.

  Facing the building, I held my arms out wide for balance and worked along the narrow ledge. The window was dark and curtained. On impulse I decided to try the door. It wasn’t a standard house door, but one that slid open sideways to receive cargo from a boat.

  Edging closer, I found the door fastened with a heavy padlock. I tested the lock by jerking on it. The nails holding the hasp to the old, dry-rotted wall were loose. I pulled on the padlock, nearly sending myself backward into the river. Getting my balance again, I pulled and jerked the lock, hoping my efforts weren’t being heard inside. When the long nails holding the hasp were out far enough, I pried the hasp off with the boat pin.