Deception by Gaslight

by Kate Belli

  DECEPTION BY GASLIGHT

  A GILDED GOTHAM MYSTERY

  Kate Belli

  For determined women everywhere who refuse to be gaslit

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Though this is a work of fiction, certain characters and events were inspired by real historical figures. My heroine Genevieve Stewart is loosely based on Elizabeth Cochran Seaman, better known by her pen name Nellie Bly, largely considered to be the first female investigative journalist in America. Though Bly was a native of Pittsburgh and not New York, she was groundbreaking in her field, opening doors for other women in the industry. The pairing of Rupert Milton and Emsie Bradley was inspired by the phenomenon of the so-called “dollar brides” in the late nineteenth century, or American heiresses who brought much-needed revenue to England by marrying British royalty. Esmie and Rupert are based on the couple Cornelia Martin and William George Robert, fourth Earl of Craven and Viscount of Uffington, whose 1893 wedding is described in M. H. Dunlop’s book Gilded City: Scandal and Sensation in Turn of the Century New York (Perennial, 2000). And of course the blizzard at the end of the book is modeled on the Great Blizzard of 1888, a horrific storm that crippled the east coast for days.

  This book would not have come to fruition without the intense efforts and faith of my tenacious agent, Danielle Egan-Miller of Browne and Miller Literary Associates. Danielle has been a fierce champion of this book since the day she first read it, and I am grateful for her confidence in my work, particularly when I have none, and for her continued guidance through the murky waters of publishing. I am also grateful to her team, past and present, whose vigilance and thorough reads of the manuscript made it stronger, and to Eleanor Roth for being so helpful with all logistical matters. My editor at Crooked Lane Press, Faith Black Ross, expertly polished the manuscript, and I am also thankful for her enthusiasm and support of this book. I have much gratitude also to the entire team at Crooked Lane, especially for the hard work of Melissa Rechter, and to Nicole Lecht for the gorgeous cover design.

  Early readers of this book included Juli Ann Patty and Christina LaFontaine, and I remain thankful for their astute comments—the book is better for their suggestions. My entire family has been nothing but supportive during this endeavor, and their cheerleading has meant the world. My sister Christine Gillespie in particular has offered commiseration, advice, and endless encouragement at all hours. She has read countless drafts and been a champion of this project from the beginning; everyone should be blessed with such a sister. My husband Marc has been the ultimate hero throughout this process, from designing my website to giving me time and space to write when I needed it. Finally, the arrival of my son five years ago was the impetus to finish my long-tinkered with manuscript. I am eternally grateful to both my guys; they are the reason this book exists.

  CHAPTER 1

  New York City

  February 1888

  When the man in the pineapple-embroidered waistcoat landed in front of her with a soft thud, Genevieve knew it had been a mistake to turn down this particular alley.

  He’d leapt, sleek and nimble as a cat, from a first-story fire escape and was now standing between her and the entrance to the street.

  There was no other way out.

  Genevieve bit her lip. Being trapped between a rock and a hard place, or between a brick wall and a man in a dirty and torn waistcoat in a darkening alley, was unsettling, to say the least. But the only way to be a real journalist was to get a good story, she reminded herself.

  And she was chasing the best story in town.

  Shoulders squared, Genevieve looked at the man planted in front of her. It was obvious his waistcoat had once been rather fine, and even in the deepening gloom the gold pineapples glinted and winked. His head was bowed low, and she couldn’t make out his face under the shadows of his hat.

  This was exactly the sort of situation in which the heroine of a penny dreadful might find herself. The thought galled her. Genevieve loathed, above all things, anything resembling stereotype.

  “Lost, miss?”

  A gruff male voice came from behind her. She wheeled around, but no one was there.

  What game was being played here? She shot a quizzical glance at Mr. Pineapple Waistcoat, and as he raised his head, his face passed through a beam of lamplight shining from the street. Her breath caught. He was, quite simply, one of the most handsome men she’d ever seen. Her brain flashed a brief image of Michelangelo’s marble David, which she’d visited in Florence. She had only a moment to ponder the incongruity of encountering such beauty in a place like Bottle Alley before the man offered her a wry little half smile and gestured upward with his brows.

  Genevieve followed his gaze, and there, perched on the iron ledge of another fire escape, sat one of the men she’d been tailing, his legs dangling.

  “You were following us,” accused another voice. She whirled around again and almost collided with a third man, his scruffy, bearded face only inches from hers. He grabbed her elbow to help steady her. Genevieve pulled free and took a step backward.

  Her heart thudded. No story was worth her life. She darted a quick glance back toward where the alley spilled open to Mulberry Street and to some promise of safety. Hands shoved deep in his pockets, Mr. Pineapple Waistcoat idly kicked at something on the dirty ground and subtly stepped to the right, freeing a narrow passage for her. Glancing up from under his hat again, he flashed the same half smile. Go, if you like, his look seemed to say.

  “My associate there seems to think you were following us, miss,” the man on the fire escape called down in a thick Bowery accent. “But me, I think you might be lost. Maybe you wanna let us know? Because Billy there, he don’t like being followed, even by a lady as pretty as you. I don’t think you’ll mind me saying this, but it’s obvious you’re not from this part of town.”

  Genevieve stole a quick glance down at the plain blue dress and short woolen jacket she’d had made just for her investigative journeys into the city’s less prosperous neighborhoods. She always dressed simply, but this was Spartan even for her.

  “So which is it, miss?” asked the man from his metal perch. “Lost or following?”

  Genevieve decided she’d better get to the point quickly. “My name is Polly Palmer,” she explained, offering her pen name rather than her real name. “I am a journalist with the New York City Globe. I want to speak with you about Robin Hood.”

  At the mention of Robin Hood, the men went still. Genevieve waited, her heart in her throat, half terrified and half hopeful. All her years of thankless toil at the newspaper writing asinine stories comparing talcum powders, all her long, desperate efforts to write something meaningful, seemed to boil down to this moment.

  A deep chuckle from above broke the silence in the alley; then came the grinding of metal on metal as the man lowered his considerable frame down a rusty ladder hanging from the edge of the fire escape.

  “It’s disgusting back here, isn’t it?” Mr. Fire Escape asked, chuckling good-naturedly. He extended his hand. “Paddy, miss,” he introduced himself. “I thought it’d be better if we could talk on the same level.”

  Genevieve felt a surge of relief; perhaps her boldness had paid off. “I am pleased to meet you, Paddy.” She took his hand, but what she saw in his face made her blood run cold. Paddy might have been laughing, but there was absolutely nothing good-natured about the look in his eye.

  “Now, what makes you think we know anything about the Hood?”

  “I overheard you talking on Mulberry Street,” Genevieve answered swiftly. “I know the articles in the press have been rather one-sided, and I want to write a story that does him justice. But I need your help.”

  Genevieve nervously took a small pad of pape
r and a pencil from the leather satchel slung over her shoulder. “Do you believe,” she said, clearing her throat, “that Robin Hood stealing from the wealthy to give to the poor is a sign of the city’s indifference to the lower classes, as some claim, or is it simply a publicity stunt on his part? Do you know anyone who has personally benefited from one of his forays? The police can’t find a soul—either the man is lying about what he does with the loot, or the recipients are an extremely closemouthed lot.” She nodded to herself as she squinted at her list of questions in the weak light, temporarily forgetting her fear. “I tend to believe the latter,” she muttered, then looked toward her subjects and took a deep breath, pencil poised on pad. “But I’m here to find out what you think.”

  Paddy regarded her gravely. “Miss, I think you should have stayed lost.”

  Genevieve felt her heart sink in both disappointment and fear.

  “Aw, c’mon, Paddy.” It was the third man, who leaned toward her and pinched at the fabric of her sleeve. She pulled the wool from his fingers and took a step backward. She decided she needed to leave right then, but before she could take a step, Paddy seemed to come to some kind of decision.

  “All right,” he said. “We’ll answer your questions.”

  Genevieve glanced past Mr. Pineapple Waistcoat, who was standing like a stoic sentry, and toward Mulberry Street, measuring her longing for the well-lit street against her longing for a lead. Contrary to her better judgment, her ambition won out, and she hesitantly put pencil to paper again, nodding at Paddy to continue.

  “But we can’t talk here, in the open.” Genevieve followed Paddy’s sweeping hand gesture around the claustrophobic space, marked only with indistinguishable piles of refuse. “Come back this way, into the building.” With that, he disappeared into the closed end of the alley and a pool of deep, dark shadows.

  “But there’s nothing back that way,” Genevieve called after him nervously, inching away from the third man, Billy, who seemed determined to get a good whiff of her hair.

  Then a shaft of weak light shone from the end of the alley, lighting Paddy from behind. Genevieve could discern only his silhouette in an open doorway, gesturing her to follow.

  Thin as it was, the light emanating from the building brightened the alley. Not by much, but just enough that the shadowy forms in the corners and the heaps against the walls began to coalesce and take shape. She started forward, then hesitated, her gaze catching on what looked like a pile of rags.

  What she had assumed was another mound of garbage against the far wall had a face, its mouth stretched into an unnatural frozen grimace. The remainder of the body—for it was suddenly, undeniably obvious that the lumpish form in the corner consisted at least in part of a dead man—was impossible to fully distinguish, as it was partially buried under rubbish.

  Genevieve froze, rooted to the spot with fear, her eyes locked on the milky ones staring back at her from the gray, mottled face of the corpse. Bile rose in the back of her throat, but as ghastly as the scene was, she found she could not look away. She’d seen dead bodies before—not in the street, but elderly relatives, respectfully cleaned and laid out for viewing—and knew enough to recognize that the man had been dead for many hours, if not a full day. He was middle-aged, she could see that now, and the dark shadow of his beard was evident, as was the large dent in the side of his skull that gave his head a misshapen, lopsided look.

  Her trance was broken when Billy grabbed her upper arm, pulling her toward the open door.

  “Hey!” Genevieve yelled, trying to wrench out of his grasp. Panic rose in her rib cage and fluttered there wildly. This had been a mistake, a horrible, wretched mistake, and if she could just get out of here, she swore she would never follow strange men into strange alleys or courtyards ever again. “Let me go!”

  “That’s enough,” came a low voice. Mr. Pineapple Waistcoat was suddenly in front of them, blocking their way to the open door. Billy paused, looking at his comrade.

  “Aw, Danny, c’mon,” he whined.

  “No,” he answered quietly. “I said that’s enough. Go on.” He indicated his chin toward Paddy. “Both of you, get outa here.”

  Billy’s eyes narrowed and his lips drew back in a snarl. “Why we gotta listen to you, Danny? She was following us!” He began to pull Genevieve toward the door again, wrapping his other arm around her waist to get a better hold of her struggling form. He progressed only a few steps before Mr. Pineapple Waistcoat grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him off.

  With her arms free now and barely able to think through the haze of her panic, Genevieve pulled back and swung out at the two men. Pain exploded in her hand as her fist collided with hard flesh, causing her to cry out. She lost her balance and stumbled to the dirty ground. She’d boxed with her brothers for years, but never without gloves, and marveled at how much it hurt.

  “Dammit, woman!” yelled the handsome man, staggering back a few steps and rubbing his jaw.

  Danny, not Mr. Pineapple Waistcoat, she told herself, now that she had a minute to think.

  Billy was so surprised that for a moment he simply gaped; then he moved toward Danny, his own fists raised.

  “Not worth it, Billy,” Paddy noted dispassionately from the doorway. “The man said to leave her be. Let’s go. We can finish our business with Danny another time.”

  Billy paused again, and Danny took the opportunity to grab hold of Genevieve himself. He stood before her in a protective manner. Heart pounding, Genevieve gratefully took refuge behind his broad back.

  “Listen to your friend,” Danny warned Billy. “Get outa here.”

  “But Danny.” He cut his eyes toward the corpse. “She saw.”

  “Never mind that. We’ll take care of it later. Go on.”

  Though she knew Billy had been dragging her toward certain harm, it killed Genevieve a little inside to watch him walk away. These men were the closest she’d come to finding a break in the Robin Hood story, and she doubted she’d ever come this close again.

  * * *

  Daniel watched Billy “the Breaker” Hanlon mope toward the tenement door, refusing to take his eyes off the other man’s back until the dirty entrance shut with an air of finality. He sighed and flexed his jaw in annoyance, glancing at the blonde woman’s face.

  He hated being followed. Daniel had first become suspicious that the woman was tailing his group about four blocks uptown. For starters, she was far too clean for this neighborhood. There were plenty of pretty girls around here, but her simple, neat blue dress was not patched and worn from being passed from an aunt to an older sister and finally to its current owner, only to eventually go to a younger sister, friend, or niece; and her shiny, thick hair had fairly gleamed against the sooty walls of the tenements they passed, making her stand out like a sore thumb. He’d noticed that, then noticed how she bobbed along in their wake for several blocks, like a shiny toy caught in the muddy current of the East River. He’d abruptly stopped at a fishmonger’s cart, startling Paddy and Billy, just to be sure. As predicted, the blonde girl had halted just as abruptly about half a block back, suddenly inspecting the wares of a fruit peddler who was about to close for the night.

  Paddy had given Daniel a sideways look, catching on right away. Billy, never the sharpest knife in the block, had inquired loudly why they were stopping for fish. The fishwife had reopened her cart hopefully, eager to make one final sale.

  Now he had a piece of bluefish wrapped in brown paper weighing down his coat pocket. He disliked bluefish. Not so much that he’d throw it out—he despised waste more than bluefish—but enough that it was annoying to have the package thumping against his leg. He hadn’t wanted to waste the fishwife’s time, though, and if there was any justice in the world the blonde was similarly burdened with wormy apples or a shriveled pear.

  He hated being followed, recalling how the press had hounded him when he’d first inherited his fortune, popping out of shrubbery and from behind moving carriages, shouting questions
or snaking along behind him silently. He’d learned to shake them early and well. After a few years, the commotion had died down and they’d moved on to fresh meat like the sharks they were. But every once in a while he would feel the skin prickle on the back of his neck and, sure enough, he would spot one of the buggers riding his coattails.

  It didn’t happen often anymore, but it still rankled. Didn’t people have better things to do than read about his life, which was exceedingly dull?

  Well, usually it was dull. The surprise of finding himself in an alley with both a journalist and a corpse meant things might become quite exciting, quite quickly.

  Finding out this elegant-looking girl was press had been a surprise. She was a far cry from the bedraggled, ratty fellows he normally had to shake. His best guess had been a temperance worker, as she had appeared soon after they exited Mulligan’s. In no mood for a lecture, he’d led his compatriots to Bottle Alley, one of the most notorious parts of the neighborhood.

  He’d truly thought there was no way she’d follow them in here, especially since night was falling, and had watched in astonishment as the blonde gingerly picked her way through the garbage in the alley. He knew it wouldn’t have ended well for her and could have written the scene that would have unfolded: Billy, who really should be behind bars, would let his damn lust get the better of him, and Paddy would have looked the other way, so to prevent it all Daniel had been forced to jump in, hoping against hope she was new to town and wouldn’t recognize him.

  But he hadn’t planned on the body.

  A reporter. A goddamn reporter.

  So far, his gamble appeared to have paid off, as she seemed not to know who he was, but he wasn’t taking any chances.

  “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?” he demanded, deliberately keeping his Bowery accent thick. Hopefully she’d had enough of a scare for one day. He surreptitiously glanced toward the dead man.