by Alan Finn
The impact, when it arrived, was louder and more jarring than I ever imagined it could be. One of the black steeds hit us first, its shoulder sideswiping our coach and sending it rocking. Then came the massive brougham itself. It crashed into the back-left corner of Lucy’s coach, ripping away wood and pushing the interior wall inward.
The coach, tilted to the right, skidded across the bridge on two wheels, dragging Lucy’s terrified horses with it. It stopped only when it hit one of the swooping wire trusses that kept the bridge in place.
The impact of that collision, while not as strong as the previous one, was enough to throw us against the right wall of the coach. I hit it with my shoulder, pain instantly flaring.
Lucy, through sheer bad luck and poor body placement, sailed right through the unblocked doorway, a scrambling jumble of satin and lace heading over the side of the bridge.
I lunged for her, able to catch only the skirt of her dress as it slithered out the door.
Lucy hung there a moment—feet slipping atop the bridge railing, arms flailing, eyes terrified—as the dark chasm of the Schuylkill gaped beneath her.
“Edward,” she wheezed, “don’t let me go.”
“I won’t,” I said. “I promise.”
The words were scarcely out of my mouth when the fabric of her dress tore.
A sickening sound, it was followed by another rip.
Then another.
Before I knew it, the section of skirt I was gripping tore away from the rest of the dress, and Lucy, screaming the entire way, plummeted to the water below.
While the bridge wasn’t too high off the river, her descent seemed to last a full minute. Terrified, I took in every detail. Her dress catching the air and opening up like a blossom in spring. The features of her wide, fearful face blurring the closer she got to the water. Her cries piercing the night air until they were suddenly and completely cut off. The way the darkened river seemed like a hand reaching up to catch her before pulling her under.
Without thinking, I clambered onto the bridge railing and dove in after her.
Unlike Lucy’s drop, mine felt like a shard of a second. I had no time to regret my action, for I was instantly in the water, thrashing about in the chilly river.
Although I was an able swimmer, the river—just south of the waterworks and the dam that fed it—moved too fast for me to navigate smoothly. Then there was the darkness, which only disoriented me further. Tumbling through the water, it was hard to tell the difference between sky, river, and horizon.
I didn’t catch sight of Lucy until the current swept me beneath the bridge. The shadow of the span sliced across the river, allowing me to see the moonlit patch of water just ahead. In that faint bit of light, I saw Lucy struggling to stay afloat. She paddled desperately, arms tangled in the sodden mass of her dress. Her pale face bobbed in and out of the water a few times before disappearing altogether.
I quickened my strokes, using the current to my advantage. Soon I was out of the bridge’s shadow and diving into the moonlit area where I had spotted Lucy. Visibility was worse under the water—a vast and inky blackness dotted with bubbles, algae, dirt. My eyes stinging, I spun around, desperately looking for some sign of Lucy. When my lungs began to ache, I rose to the surface and took a quick breath before plunging back under once more.
This time, I caught sight of Lucy, not ahead of me or behind me, but beneath me. Like an anchor, she had dropped to the river’s bottom, unable to rise despite her frantic kicks. Diving downward, I scooped my arms under hers and tried to lift her. I wasn’t able to, not with her sodden dress weighing her down.
I let go of Lucy and began to tear at her outfit. Tugging at the seams, I ripped away swaths of fabric. Buttons popped off and spun in the water. Silken strands floated away like kelp. Soon the dress was nothing but shreds and Lucy slipped out of it, finally free.
I swam to the surface, breathing the night air in deep, blessed gulps. Lucy, too winded to swim, wrapped her arms around my chest and rode on my back as I moved toward the riverbank. When the water was shallow enough for me to stand, I scooped Lucy up and carried her to shore.
Once on land, Lucy dropped to her knees, coughing and gasping. Through the ragged gasps, she managed to utter two words. “Can’t . . . breathe.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
Lucy gasped out another word. “Corset.”
She pointed to the lace-trimmed corset that squeezed her waist like a vise. It was so tight that I was surprised she had been able to breathe even out of the water. But her time in the drink had now left her with no breath at all.
I jumped behind her, only to see that the corset tied up the front. With Lucy still gasping helplessly, I scrambled in front of her.
It might come as no great shock when I say that, at that point in my life, I had never touched a corset. Inexperience caused my fingers to fumble with the garment’s laces. Making matters worse was the panicked way Lucy stared at me.
“Hurry,” she said, her voice no more than a squeak.
Having no luck loosening the corset the proper way, I grabbed the top of it, just beneath Lucy’s bosom, and tried to pry it open. The laces barely budged as Lucy’s ribs pressed against the garment, straining to break free. After two more grunting attempts, I managed to loosen the corset enough so that Lucy could catch her breath.
She inhaled, long and deep. At last able to utter a full sentence, she said, “Get me out of this damned thing.”
We both began to tear at the corset’s laces, our hands brushing and fingers entangling. Lucy’s breath was hot on my neck as we worked, loosening the garment’s laces row by row. With one final flourish, we tore the corset off and tossed it aside.
Thus freed of her constraints, Lucy collapsed against me, her head resting on my shoulder.
“Edward,” she gasped out. “You . . . you saved—”
“Shh,” I said. “Don’t talk. Just breathe.”
But Lucy insisted on trying to speak, her mouth opening and closing slightly as she struggled for the right words to say. Finally, she settled on, “Thank you.”
She repeated those words several times, sighing them into my shoulder. I put my arms around her, noticing how she was soaked to the bone and freezing cold. She shivered uncontrollably, giving me no choice but to hold her tighter.
“We need to get you someplace dry and warm,” I gently said. “You’re going to catch your death from cold. We both will.”
Lucy moved, but only far enough to face me. Looking into my eyes, she wore an expression I had never seen from her before. Curious and contemplative, it felt as if she were seeing me for the very first time. Her green eyes searched mine, desperately trying to communicate something she was unable—or unwilling—to say aloud.
Eventually, she settled on one last “Thank you.”
Then she closed her eyes and, tilting her head back, lifted her face to mine. Her lips parted ever so slightly, like a rosebud opening up to the sun.
She was about to kiss me, and I wanted her to do so. I had, I realized, longed for it ever since climbing into her coach earlier that night. I even found myself leaning forward and bowing my head to meet her mouth halfway.
I would have continued, too, had good sense not chosen that moment to return. Violet, quite rightly, suddenly consumed my thoughts. No matter how beautiful Lucy was, I had pledged myself to Miss Willoughby. To kiss another woman—to give in to that temptation—would have been a betrayal on my part. One that would never allow me to forgive myself.
Pulling away from Lucy, I placed both hands on her shoulders and gently nudged her backward.
“We really need to get out of this chill,” I told her.
Lucy’s eyes snapped open, and her demeanor changed immediately. Her face, once soft in the moonlight, seemed to harden as her green eyes dimmed. She straightened her spine and backed away from me farther, suddenly conscious that she was now dressed only in a soaked petticoat.
“You’re quite right.”
Her voice, much like her body, had become rigid and unwavering. “And a true gentleman would have already offered me his coat.”
“Of course,” I said, chagrined that I had failed to do so.
I started to remove my sopping wet coat, which was reluctant to unstick itself from my limbs. I finally wrangled out of it and handed it to Lucy. She wrung out the coat before draping it over her shoulders.
“If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you planned this whole thing,” she said, her voice now aiming for levity but falling far short of the mark.
“Why on earth would I do that?”
“Because you’re still mad at me for seeing you in a state of undress after barging in on you and your tailor,” she replied. “But rest assured, we are now even. For now we’ve both seen each other in our underclothes.”
V
My coat did little good to warm Lucy. She huddled, still soaked and shivering, on one side of the coach, while I did the same on the other. Both of us remained silent. It was clear neither of us wanted to speak about my rescue of her or what happened on the riverbank after it.
According to Thomas, the brougham that tried to run us off the bridge departed as soon as Lucy fell into the water. Fearful of its return, he wisely steered the coach off the bridge and onto a dirt path that ran beside the Schuylkill. The coach had received a good amount of damage, but it still had four wheels and two tired but uninjured Cleveland Bays able to pull it.
Instead of returning to Lucy’s house or having me dropped off at Locust Street, I gave Thomas the directions to the home of Inspector William Barclay. A crime of sorts had taken place, and we needed to report it to the proper authorities. And although my friendship with Barclay was currently strained, he was the best person to tell.
Barclay answered the door in rumpled bedclothes and wild hair. Lord only knows what went through his mind when he spied me dripping wet on his doorstep. I’m sure he was baffled, as any right-minded person would have been. Yet the only thing he could utter was, “What the devil happened to you?”
“We were almost run down,” I told him.
Lucy pushed out of the coach, urgency overcoming any modesty she might have had about standing in the street in only a damp petticoat and my equally wet coat. “By the very man who had threatened Mrs. Pastor days before her death!”
Barclay, eyes as wide as wagon wheels, said, “Get inside at once! All of you. Before you catch your death from cold and I become the scandal of the neighborhood.”
We moved indoors, retreating to Barclay’s sitting room. Thomas curled up on a divan and promptly fell asleep. Lucy traded my coat for a few wool blankets. I warmed myself by the fire while Barclay lit a pipe, his hands shaking. After a hurried puff, he said, “I see you’ve spoken to Robert Pastor about the man without a nose.”
“I have,” I said. “I’ve also seen this man in person. Twice now. And, considering what just happened to us, I don’t relish seeing him a third time.”
“What reason would this man have to kill you?” Barclay asked.
“You don’t believe that it happened?” Lucy asked as she angrily tightened the blankets around her shoulders.
“I see no reason to doubt your story,” Barclay said. “I’m just curious as to what could have prompted this man to want you dead.”
“We obviously know too much,” I declared. “I haven’t a clue as to what that information might be. But this man had something to do with the murder of Lenora Grimes Pastor and now he’s targeting us.”
Barclay, as was his wont, sighed in my direction. “I suppose this means you’ve been continuing your ill-advised investigation?”
“We certainly have,” Lucy retorted. “And it’s only ill-advised if you’re not the one being blamed for murder.”
“But don’t you suppose it would be wiser to let me, as the official investigator, do that? Especially seeing that your efforts have now apparently put you in danger.”
I didn’t, and I told Barclay as much. While I was fearful of the noseless man, his actions indicated that Lucy and I were on the right path. A dangerous path, to be sure, but one that could possibly lead to our exoneration.
Barclay stroked his mustache for a moment, no doubt thinking about the best way to handle the situation. He then surprised me by saying, “Perhaps it’s best if we shared information. You tell me what you have learned, and I’ll do the same.”
While he smoked his pipe, I told him everything Lucy and I had discovered in our two days of sleuthing, from that first chat with Stokely to what Mr. Barnum had told us in the kitchen of the Continental Hotel. Barclay seemed to know many of the same things we did, such as Barnum’s failed efforts to convince Mrs. Pastor to tour the country. Other tidbits, like Mr. Dutton’s private Saturday séances, were a surprise to him.
“This is all very interesting,” he said when I had finished. “The two of you are tenacious, to say the least.”
“Thank you,” Lucy replied. “Unlike you, our situation demands it.”
“Now I suppose it’s my turn,” Barclay said. “And the biggest bit of news is that the toxicologist has discovered what substance led to Mrs. Pastor’s death.”
“What was it?” Lucy asked.
“Apitoxin.”
“Apitoxin? I’ve never heard of it,” I said. “Is that some new form of poison?”
“I thought the same thing,” Barclay admitted. “I had never heard of it, either. But the toxicologist told me it’s very common. I’ve been poisoned by it, as, most likely, have the two of you.”
“I don’t follow,” I said. “How have we all been poisoned?”
Barclay gave me a coy smile, pleased that he at last had more information than we did. “You’ve been stung by a bee, haven’t you?”
“Of course,” Lucy said.
“Well, that’s what apitoxin is. Bee venom.”
I scratched my head, confounded by this news. “Bee venom? You mean Mrs. Pastor was killed by a bee sting?”
“Not quite,” Barclay said. “She was still poisoned. It’s simply that bee venom was the method. It’s a natural neurotoxin, you see. In large doses, it causes paralysis of the body and its organs. Everything inside her simply seized up.”
“Are you certain it wasn’t a bee sting?” I asked, naively holding out hope. “Perhaps Mrs. Pastor had an allergy to them.”
“She didn’t,” Barclay said. “The toxicologist discovered far more apitoxin in Mrs. Pastor’s body than what is possible from a single sting. And the puncture wound in her neck was far larger than one left by an average sting.”
“But how can someone be poisoned by bee venom without being stung by one?” Lucy asked.
“By using the venom of many bees,” Barclay said.
“You’re telling us that someone collected bee venom?” I then asked. “How is that possible?”
“I haven’t the foggiest idea,” Barclay replied. “But that’s what happened. And one of the seven people in that room is responsible for it.”
Lucy leaned back in her chair, seemingly relieved by the news. “Well, it certainly wasn’t me. I don’t know the first thing about bees.”
“Neither do I,” I said. “In fact, I can’t recall ever being stung by one.”
Yet at that moment, I did recall something else. What I remembered was Mrs. Pastor’s surprise appearance during my nightmare and the way a single bee had flown from her mouth. At first I had thought it strange, but only in the way that dreams are, with long-forgotten faces suddenly popping up and doing unexpected deeds. Had it been any other person, I would have chalked up her nightmarish appearance and what Barclay was telling us as mere coincidence. But since it was Lenora Grimes Pastor we were dealing with, I began to suspect that coincidence had nothing to do with it. Just like the table-tipping incident on Sunday, it was possible that her presence in my dream had been real and on purpose. As ridiculous as it seemed, I was starting to think that Mrs. Pastor had been trying to tell me how she had been murdered.
; Even more startling was the fact that she wasn’t the first nightmarish apparition to involve a bee. A similar incident had occurred only a day before her death.
“Sophie Kruger,” I blurted out.
Lucy and Barclay both looked at me as if I were mad, which I was starting to think I was.
“The girl who drowned the other day,” I reminded Barclay.
“I remember her,” he said. “But why bring her up now?”
“Because it is my belief that she was also killed by bee venom.”
It took a good deal of explaining on my part. I must have spent at least ten minutes describing Mrs. Pastor’s visit in my dream before reminding Barclay how Margarethe Kruger witnessed her daughter Sophie make a similar appearance the morning she drowned.
“Mrs. Kruger said Sophie was in the room with her and a bee flew out of her mouth,” I said. “The same thing happened to me last night, only it was Mrs. Pastor.”
Lucy reached out to me, concerned. “Edward, when you jumped off the bridge, did you hit your head?”
“No,” I said, swatting her hand away. “I’m quite right in the head at the moment. Enough to think that Lenora Grimes Pastor and Sophie Kruger were both killed in the same manner, most likely by the same person.”
“But that’s impossible,” Barclay said. “I doubt the two of them had ever met. Then there’s the fact that the Kruger girl drowned in the Delaware River.”
“We don’t know for certain that she drowned,” I quickly replied. “If you recall, I questioned her cause of death that morning on the pier. And I doubt the coroner did an examination of her body.”
Barclay released another sigh. “He did not.”
“So we have no idea why Sophie Kruger died.”
“Edward,” Barclay said with as much patience as he could muster, “you realize what you’re saying is preposterous.”
Preposterous it was. But a small, stubborn kernel of certainty rested in my gut, telling me I was right. I just needed to find a way to prove it.
“Is that toxicologist from New York still in the city?” I asked.
“Yes,” Barclay said. “He’s scheduled to depart in the morning.”