The Alchemy of Murder

by Carol McCleary

  My heart pumped like a steam engine. I leaned my head against the building, slowing my breathing to get it under control. Putting my shoulder against the door, it slid over reluctantly, making a scraping noise more irritating than fingernails on a blackboard.

  I slipped through the door and into a dark room, wondering where I was. Not daring to move without some light for fear I’d knock something over, I pulled the curtain on the window open enough to let in faint moonlight. It was a bedroom, a small one with just a cot not unlike the ones used for patients, but with a thicker mattress and many blankets.

  I went across the room to a door. The door squeaked as I opened it and I cringed, ready to explain that I had entered by mistake. I was surprised I hadn’t been discovered and chastised already. I put my head through the open doorway and saw a kitchen. As with the bedroom, it was small. No light was in the room but another door was opened. A source of light came from there. I assumed it to be a living room and the light I saw from the outside. My estimation was that his personal quarters ended there because the kerosene storeroom was next.

  I listened and heard nothing but the foghorn on a distant watercraft. No talking between Dr. Blum and Josephine, no sighs or grunts of passion—thank goodness! Nothing. There was hardly enough light in the living room for two people to sit and comfortably converse socially.

  Had Josephine misspoke when she told me she was going to his quarters? Could she have meant his office? Not a hundred percent certain I was alone, I slipped quietly across the kitchen to the open living room doorway.

  The lamp on the table next to the window put out enough light to see that the doctor used the living room as his laboratory. And that the lab was much more complex than I had expected. A long table in the center of the room was crowded with scientific apparatus—a microscope, a Bunsen burner, stacks of petri dishes, and a forest of glass tubes and bottles. Two other small tables against the wall held more bottles and canisters.

  Dr. Blum obviously took his scientific studies seriously. This was more the workshop of a full-time chemist than a doctor hoping to make a discovery with a microscope and some petri dishes.

  The only sitting area, other than a work stool at the large table, was a couch across the room with a mound of blankets on it. It appeared blankets were heaped atop something—the “something” being the right size for a small built woman like Josephine bent in a fetal position.

  I carefully went to it and pulled the blankets off.

  Two pillows. Probably used by the doctor when he sacked out on the couch.

  I smelled something, an odor that I didn’t instantly recognize. Not a chemical odor, but something different, something more organic. Two dark mounds about the size of a man’s fist were on a glass sheet on the table. Getting closer to sniff them, I recognized the scent. Blood. The stench of raw meat—animal innards. What in God’s name could Dr. Blum be experimenting with?

  A small, narrow, whitish object lay next to the dark mounds. I leaned down to get a look at it and caught my breath.

  A human finger with a ring on it … Josephine’s ring.

  I screamed.

  The door flew open and a dark figure emerged. Dr. Blum wore a bloodied white smock. He held a large knife in one hand and something else in the other, but my brain was too frozen with shock to comprehend what it was.

  He started for me and I screamed and threw the wood pin. It flew by him and hit the lamp. The glass bowl exploded in a burst of fire.

  With mindless panic, I grabbed his laboratory table with both hands and sent it crashing over, the forest of bottles and glass apparatus flying at him and breaking at his feet.

  Flames exploded behind me as I blindly ran back through the same rooms I had entered. I stumbled out the cargo doors into the cold river.

  7

  Raging flames engulfed the shack and pier when the fire hit the stored oil barrels, rousing the entire island. Patients and staff poured out of the buildings, but there was nothing they could do to stop the huge blaze—the shack and pier were dry rotted and ignited like kindling wood.

  I crawled out of the river and collapsed on the ground.

  Dear Miss Maynard spotted me and came running. She took off her shawl and wrapped it around me. I told her that Josephine had been murdered by Doctor Blum and that he tried to kill me, but my words were a frantic jumble.

  “Hush, they’ll think you burned the place.”

  From out of nowhere Nurse Grupe appeared, grabbed my hair, and pushed Miss Maynard away.

  I babbled that Doctor Blum killed Josephine and tried to kill me. She acted as if she hadn’t heard a word I said and kept a tight grasp on my hair. As other nurses looked away, she shoved me into a padded room where they put out-of-control women and locked the door.

  I screamed and pounded the door until I finally gave in to exhaustion. I was freezing and my lungs were raw from yelling. There were no blankets, nothing to get me dry and warm. My hair felt like it had been ripped off of my scalp. I curled up in a ball and started to cry.

  I killed Josephine.

  I sensed something was wrong with the man and chose to ignore my instincts in order to get a story. No matter how I tried to justify my actions, I knew it was my fault. She died because of me.

  Josephine and the doctor were both missing and presumed drowned or incinerated in the fire. But an annoying voice tucked away in the recess of my brain wouldn’t allow me to believe the doctor was dead. He either swam or rowed to the Manhattan shore. As hard as I tried to shake the feeling away, I couldn’t, so I went to the alienist in charge of the ward and made accusations about Dr. Blum. He stared at me for a moment and then wrote something in his log book.

  “What did you write?” I asked.

  “That you are hopelessly insane and delusional.”

  * * *

  AFTER I WAS released from the insane asylum by the World, I told Mr. Pulitzer about the mad killer. I was disappointed when he expressed no interest, but I couldn’t blame him—the fire had destroyed the evidence. But he was ecstatic about my mad house story. The report blew the lid off the terrible conditions at Blackwell’s Island and Mr. Pulitzer called it the most important story of the year. And I was able to get Miss Maynard released, with a job and a place to live.

  Best of all, because of the strength of my story, New York City’s committee of appropriation provided $1 million, more than ever before given for the benefit of the insane.*

  In regards to Dr. Blum, even though my nagging feeling continued that he had survived the inferno, I had to let it go—but the guilt, grief, and anger stayed with me.

  * * *

  BECAUSE OF MY huge success with Blackwell’s Island, Mr. Pulitzer assigned me to other undercover stories: I became employed by a doctor as a maid and did an exposé on the cruelty to servants; I posed as a sinner in need of reform, and committed myself into a home for unfortunate women to report on how the stay did nothing but empty the pockets of helpless women.

  Mr. Pulitzer even had me go undercover as a prostitute. Nobody really knew the truth about their lives—why they became prostitutes or how many were really single women working the streets at night. It was dangerous, but in a way I did it for Josephine.

  My first night out I befriended a woman and asked her, “Why would you risk your reputation and life in such a way?” Her response saddened me deeply and I made sure to share it with the public by printing her exact words:

  Risk my reputation! [She gave me a short laugh.] I don’t think I ever had one to risk. I work hard all day, week after week, for a mere pittance. I go home at night tired of labor and longing for something new, anything good or bad to break the monotony of my existence. I have no pleasure, no books to read. I cannot go to places of amusement for want of clothes and money, and no one cares what becomes of me.

  I cared.

  For my next assignment I went undercover at the factory where I worked during the day and wrote an article exposing the unfair treatment and working condition
s to women—how they were doing the same job as men, putting in the same hours, and many times doing it better, while only men got raises and promotions.

  To my delight it created quite a stir and Mr. Pulitzer liked it. As long as circulations climbed, he didn’t care whose feathers were ruffled. I just prayed it would initiate change.

  In time I began acquiring success and fame as my stories kept making the front pages of the New York World. The staff jokingly called it the New York Nellie.

  * * *

  EVEN THOUGH JOSEPHINE’S body was missing, Miss Maynard and I didn’t want her to be forgotten like so many tarnished women are, so we had a tombstone made with an inscription that I bastardized from Shakespeare: “Life is but a walking shadow … one day it disappears, but your beautiful smile and kind and generous heart will never be forgotten.”

  On the anniversary of her first year gone, we planted the tombstone under a weeping willow—it just seemed fitting.

  Then the London slashings began.

  8

  In the fall of 1888, a series of ghastly crimes, five in all, put London in a panic. The Whitechapel murderer who called himself “Jack” killed women of the streets, mutilating them horribly and extracting body parts with such precision that the police suspected he might be a doctor with an expertise in surgery.

  My blood rose. Dr. Blum was no longer a fleeing ghost. He was alive.

  I was convinced this “Jack” and my Dr. Blum were one and the same and was compelled to London to investigate. Mr. Pulitzer did not share my enthusiasm. But when I suggested I walk the streets of London’s notorious—and dangerous—Whitechapel district dressed as a prostitute to lure the Ripper, he agreed. No doubt he believed that if I was murdered, I would be canonized as a saint of newspapermen—and he would sell many papers.

  My mother, on the other hand, had a completely different reaction. The poor dear became so upset when I told her what I was going to do, a doctor had to come and administer a sedative.

  She was right. The whole idea was ludicrous, especially the notion that I could fend off the Ripper’s knife in London or anywhere else. What she couldn’t comprehend was something else of singular importance overpowered my fears—the guilt I felt for Josephine’s death. He had to be captured so he could never mutilate another woman.

  * * *

  WITH A POLICE whistle in hand and my mother’s long hat pin she insisted I wear at all times to use as a weapon, I left for London. Never would I admit to anyone how scared I was—especially to myself.

  Upon arriving I met with Inspector Abberline, of Scotland Yard, the officer in charge of the Ripper investigation. At first he told me he wouldn’t allow a woman to make herself bait to a mad-killer. It was, as he put it, “Plain out loony!” But once I told him my story and that I didn’t cross the ocean to be stopped, he reluctantly agreed.

  He took me to the Whitechapel district, helped me find a place to stay and introduced me to the policemen on the beat so they wouldn’t arrest me for prostitution. Just before parting we set up times to meet and he gave a police whistle, noting mine was a toy. If any man aroused my suspicion, I was to blow hard.

  I thanked him and told him not to fear, I would blow like Joshua.

  After I had a couple of stressful nights walking the streets, Inspector Abberline told me about a doctor that had come to their attention. He was of foreign descent, possibly German, Russian, or other Eastern European lineage, and had a laboratory in a cheap tenement right in the heart of the Whitechapel district. My enthusiasm roused the inspector into action and he allowed me to accompany him to the premises to see if I could identify the man as Dr. Blum.

  Emotions ran high for everyone as we raced to the location. An electrical charge was in the air as the carriage drivers cracked their whips to speed their horses along. Inside the police wagon the inspector kept drumming his fingers on his knees. I couldn’t believe it. I was on my way to identify the man who brutally murdered Josephine and tried to kill me.

  The inspector planned our arrival during the early afternoon, based on an anonymous tip that the doctor would be working in his lab. A block before the building the police wagon slowed down, so not to give warning of our arrival.

  We had no sooner stepped down from the wagon when an explosion rocked the building and a fire erupted. I can’t say if my eyes were tearing from the smoke and powder fumes or from frustration and anger that all evidence was going up in smoke, as with the pier shack.

  Defeated, I returned to New York depressed and without a killer or story.

  Mr. Pulitzer made it clear to me that my investigation of Dr. Blum was closed. “Against my better judgment I let you go to London to catch the Ripper. You failed.”

  I hated to admit it, but he was right.

  * * *

  MATTERS MIGHT HAVE stayed at a standstill but for a chance remark from G. Steven Jones, the World’s recently returned Paris correspondent. Hearing of my attempt to snare the Ripper in London, he thought I’d be interested in mutilation killings in Paris.

  “Mutilation killings in Paris? Are you sure? Mister Pulitzer just returned from the World’s Fair. He never mentioned anything of the sort.”

  “That’s because he doesn’t want you running off to Paris. Besides, the French government is keeping a tight lid on the slashings to avoid panic. Think about it. Can you imagine what would happen to the World’s Fair if news got out that a man is mutilating women?”

  “Is there any particular area where the killings are taking place? In London, he targeted prostitutes in the Whitechapel district.”

  “Montmartre—it’s the city’s bohemian district and known for the scandalous behavior of the residents, many of whom are artists and writers. Not to mention it’s overflowing with prostitutes.”

  “You’re sure a man has been killing women in the same fashion as the Ripper?”

  “Yes, but I must warn you, if you plan on going, don’t let the boss know I spilled the beans, and don’t contact the Paris police and tell them you’re hunting a mad killer.”

  “Why?”

  “Paris is already being racked by problems. Terrorism was born in Paris a hundred years ago during the Reign of Terror. Now it’s come back. Anarchists, who cast their votes with guns and bombs, are fermenting revolution at a time when the French economy is as black as Newcastle coal. The World’s Fair is pulling in millions of francs and the government isn’t going to permit a scandal that threatens the revenue. That’s why the police have put a lid on the story. If you go to them with your theory that a killer is on the streets stalking women, you’ll be arrested.”

  Money over the lives of people? What kind of world did I live in?

  “And besides all the other problems, there’s been an outbreak of Black Fever.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A deadly influenza. They believe it’s caused by miasma from sewer flumes because it putrefies a body until it decomposes and becomes foul smelling.”

  Ten days in a madhouse was beginning to sound safer than a visit to the City of Light.

  * * *

  I WALKED THE streets of Manhattan digesting what Mr. Jones had told me. Doctor Blum had resurfaced in Paris. The Paris slashings were the work of the same man who had wet his knife in New York and London. I was certain—again. And I was going. Now all I had to do was convince Mr. Pulitzer to assign me to Paris.

  With my failure in London and the expense it incurred, I knew he wasn’t going to be receptive to my request. Worse, the only clever approach I could come up with was the truth: I was operating off of pure intuition.

  * * *

  “NELLIE, HOW MANY times do I have to tell you you’re a good reporter?” Mr. Pulitzer tapped his pencil on his desk. “But you’ve fallen off the log on this one. Need I remind you that Paris is in a foreign country and you don’t even speak the language?”

  “My French is adequate.”*

  “It’s too dangerous.”

  “The French have a saying: Qui cra
int le danger ne doit pas aller en mer,” I said, showing off. “One who fears danger shouldn’t go to sea.”

  “I don’t care what the frogs say.”

  “Then how about the Bard of Avon. ‘I must go and meet with danger there, or it will seek me in another place, and find me worse provided.’”

  “Young woman, Shakespeare doesn’t sell newspapers. And neither do wild goose chases to Paris. There’ve been no reports of a Parisian slasher.”

  “The police are keeping it under a tight lid. If news got out that the Ripper is there killing women, it would ruin the fair and destroy the economy of Paris.”

  “Nonsense!”

  “Regardless of what’s going on over there, I have to go.”

  “This conversation is concluded.” He pointed at the door.

  * * *

  TO EASE PULITZER’S anger, before getting on the boat in New York I sent him a box of his favorite Cuban cigars with a note boldly boasting I would not only return soon, but with a story that would top my madhouse exposé.

  With regard to my mother, I told her I was going to Paris to cover the World’s Fair. It would have been brutally cruel to put her through that terrible fear again and as selfish as this sounds, I needed a clear head, not one worrying about my mother’s health because she’s worrying over me.

  Once again I was crossing the ocean to hunt a madman who willingly takes a knife and slashes the essence from women. Only this time I had to avoid the police and an invisible killer from the sewers.

  At first it seemed quite a well-behaved epidemic.

  Dr. Brouardel, deputed to investigate it by the public authority, reported that the disorder was trifling and that a few days at home by the fire was all the treatment it required.

  This was complacently published in the newspapers and became a standing joke. “Have you got it?” “Not yet?” “Well, you will, because we’ve all got to have it.”

  In the cabarets they were singing: Everybody’s got the influe-en-za-ah!

  But they soon began to find out that it was not a joke. The death toll began to mount alarmingly and the people got into a state of panic. It was useless for the Press to publish reassuring statements; their own obituary columns gave them the lie. Public services became disorganized, theatres closed, fêtes were put off, and law sittings suspended. Under this cloud of panic and depression the year 1889 passed out. And the winter following was not calculated to reassure anyone.