Into the Suffering City

by Bill LeFurgy

  “I am not demented.” Sarah squirmed uncomfortably as the coarse wool dug into various parts of her body. “I recall hearing about the deaths of my father and sister before waking up in this place. I must have suffered a temporary nervous reaction. I wish to leave immediately.”

  Dr. Grant smiled. “I know your type of madness. You can act normal for a while, but sooner or later you’ll snap back into a fully deranged state. We need to stop your playacting. Let’s start with some hydrotherapy.”

  She was taken to a room with a tub of water. Three large matrons emptied buckets of ice into the tub, forced her to undress, and lifted her into the water. A matron held her in the tub until her teeth chattered uncontrollably. Then she was plunked into a near-scalding bath and scrubbed with coarse brushes until her skin was raw. After a rough toweling and redressing, she was moved to a large room filled with wooden benches. A bin by the door held a sad assortment of broken dolls, torn children’s primers, wooden spoons, and other objects. An old woman in front of her was told to pick something and go sit down. When she refused, an attendant knocked her to the floor. After time on the benches, Sarah and the others were back in the dining hall for a lunch of bread and watery mashed potatoes.

  Next came occupational rehabilitation, which included tasks such as scouring floors, emptying privies, and grinding wet laundry against a washboard. After a dinner of dry cornbread, overcooked vegetables, and gristly meat, it was back to the barred room for a few hours of fitful sleep. Weeks passed with only slight variation in this routine.

  Then Dr. Grant said she needed more intensive treatment and prescribed something known as “counter-irritation.” The idea was to refocus the mind through physical pain. A caustic ointment was smeared on the back of her neck to raise a huge, oozing blister that hurt more than anything she had ever known. Sarah continued to insist she was sane, and the ointment became a regular part of her day.

  In the midst of this terrible ordeal, Sarah found she could ease the suffering of some inmates with a careful touch and a few moments of positive attention. Soon she had an assortment of wretches seeking her help at all hours. Never had so many people needed and accepted her, and she benefitted so much from the experience that she was able to endure her treatment.

  Then it was suddenly over. The Bonifants, who had searched for her without pause during the five weeks since she had been whisked away, found the asylum and got her released. After a month under Margaret’s care, Sarah was well enough to review the official findings for the deaths of her father and sister. She learned that arsenic, if carefully administered, can mimic typhoid. She noted also that arsenic was also known as “inheritance powder,” the full meaning of which she took care to understand.

  A thorough search of the Kennecott home turned up a large canister of arsenic hidden in the pantry along with a record of doses, written in Marie’s hand, that matched the dates for the family’s illness. Sarah convinced Margaret to arrange, through her husband, for the bodies of her family to be exhumed and tested. Both had lethal doses of arsenic in their remains. That led to the arrest, trial, and imprisonment of her stepmother.

  The experience with her stepmother caused Sarah to switch her career plans to medicine. She would use the science of pathology to identify victims of foul play and bring their murderers to justice.

  Just one ambition eclipsed her passion for catching killers—avoiding placement in a lunatic asylum ever again.

  Chapter 14

  Jack—Wednesday, October 13, 1909, 9:00 a.m.

  This part of the waterfront had seen better days. The stable on the corner of Ann and Fell Streets abutted two crumbling brick structures, and all three leaned together as if they longed to lie down in the rubble-strewn vacant lot to their right. The stable looked abandoned, yet this was where Nick was supposedly holed up.

  Jack ground his teeth at the sight of teamsters lashing an eight-horse team pulling a railroad freight car up a spur to the main line. Citing safety, the city government didn’t allow locomotives this close to the wharves. The city cared much less about cruelty to horses.

  The stable doors were closed and locked, so he walked around and saw a rickety shed tacked onto the back of the place. The wood siding on the shed was rotted and saggy. He gave one of the boards a quick kick, and it fell off. He waited for a guy to pass by with a handcart filled with caged chickens before ripping out enough boards to crawl inside.

  Thick dust swirled around in the bars of sunlight coming through cracks in the walls. There was a dry, musty smell of old hay and horse manure that grew as he walked into the blackness of the main stable building. The place was cold in the permanent way that abandoned buildings get. He walked to within a couple of feet of a partially open door marked by a thin slant of light.

  It was quiet except for a faint rumbling from the street and rustling of mice in the walls. Pulling out the Colt, he softly pushed the door open to a room dimly lit by two filthy windows. A man’s body, wearing a flashy yellow suit, was slumped over a table. Dead as a mackerel.

  Jack glanced around—the room was a dump, with junk tossed everywhere. Jack used the Colt to lift the head from a sticky pool of blood on the table just far enough to see the stiff’s pretty boy face and a bullet hole in the right temple. He smelled whiskey from the open mouth and noticed an Iver-Johnson .32 revolver on the floor under the dangling right arm. As he stepped closer to the table, something crunched. Lifting his foot, he saw a small lump of bone and gristle—a pig’s foot with the meat freshly chewed away. Well, how about that.

  Two chipped glass tumblers and a pile of musical compositions tied with red cloth tape sat in the center of the table. A single sheet of paper had i’m sorry—nick written in crude block letters. The body had nothing of interest in its pockets other than forty bucks in mixed bills and a bank draft for fifty dollars from Lucas Patterson made payable to Nick Monkton. Jack left the dough alone. Someone would lift the cash before the body reached the morgue, but he’d give the cops a chance to use the draft to identify the body.

  He looked back at the tumblers and thought of fingerprints. Definitely a long shot that the cops cared about that—but Sarah would. He wrapped the glasses in old newspapers and stuck them in a grain sack. There was the note—the cops really would want that—still, he had no reason to do them any favors. He picked up the paper with his handkerchief and pushed it into the grain sack with the glasses.

  After ensuring no one was around, Jack stepped outside. He turned north on Broadway, grain bag in hand. He had to jump, tumblers clinking, to avoid getting bowled over by a young woman coming straight at him behind a baby carriage. “I got a kid here, you stinking bum!” she yelled over her shoulder without slowing down. The gal was making the most of her time with a baby. Then again, maybe she was cracky and trotting around with no kid in the stroller at all.

  A column of black smoke rose into the sky just ahead. A fire engine charged past, its horses frothing and steam pump hissing like a tub of snakes. Another engine followed, siren cycling from a low groan to an earsplitting wail with each hand crank. At the intersection with Fairmont fire engines were busy spraying water onto a fire raging in a storefront across the street from the Church Home and Infirmary.

  Dozens of people were gawking at the scene, with more pressing in all the time. Jack slowly elbowed his way through the crowd and took a detour west toward Bethel, the next street north, until a cop blocked his way. “Keep going,” he said, gesturing with his nightstick. “New policy says we got to keep streets clear for six blocks around any building fire.”

  Jack heaved a sigh and kept walking. He didn’t care much for city rules and regulations, but he had missed the 1904 fire that razed downtown right to the edge of the harbor. The city big shots had to keep demonstrating their concern to citizens who remembered the fire—even if it meant doing things more for show than prevention.

  Finding Sarah at the Hopkins Hospital turned out to be a drawn-out chore that involved questioning a series of bor
ed clerks and harried nurses in two different buildings. He eventually arrived at a brick structure behind the hospital at the corner of Wolfe and Monument Streets. Inside, the place was all done up in fancy marble, carved wainscoting, and shiny wood floors. A row of distinguished old guys stared out from paintings on the wall. None of them looked pleased to see him.

  “The boiler is downstairs.”

  Jack turned around to see a sharp-featured young man with slick black hair. He wore a crisp white jacket and had a monocle stuck in one eye socket.

  “Boiler?”

  “Do you speak English? I swear you tradesmen are getting more bothersome every day.” The man spoke loudly while pointing down. “The. Boiler. Is. Downstairs.”

  “Listen, pal, I’m not here to fix your damn boiler.” Blood was hammering in Jack’s ears as he stepped to within inches of the guy.

  “Oh. Well.” The man somehow managed to seem arrogant and afraid at the same time.

  “I’m looking for Sarah Kennecott.”

  “Really, now. That is so very interesting.” He smiled tightly as he pointed a droopy finger attached to a limp hand. “She is downstairs in the histology laboratory.”

  As Jack walked off, he heard the guy release a high titter. How could Sarah stand to be around characters like that? A stream of young people came rushing up the stairs as he went down. Students. Out of two dozen, Jack saw one woman, walking alone with her head lowered. Jack wondered if she got better treatment in this place than he did. Different, probably, but not necessarily better.

  The laboratory was a long room with two rows of workbenches. Eight round stools—the adjustable kind with seats attached to long screws—were evenly spaced along each row. Glass bottles of different shapes and sizes, along with some complicated-looking instruments, clustered in spots along the benches. A woman was at the far end, hunched over and examining something with a big magnifying glass. He recognized Sarah from her mussed hair. She remained completely absorbed in whatever she was inspecting and didn’t look up as he approached.

  “Finding anything good?” Her whole body flinched before she looked up, eyes big as saucers. “Sorry to have startled you.”

  She had a hand on her chest and was blinking rapidly. “Jack. What are you doing here?”

  “I brought you a present. Three, actually.” Jack set the bag with the glasses on the table next to her. “Found Nick, shot in the head as if he killed himself. That doesn’t make sense—don’t think he was the type. I smelled booze and thought it was possible someone gave him a drink, got the drop, and shot him. Found two glasses and a note. Didn’t touch anything with my bare hands because I figured you could check for fingerprints—this stuff could be linked to what happened to Lizzie.”

  “Have you reported the death to the police?”

  “Why should I? They’ll find him eventually.”

  “Jack. You must report the death immediately.” She stood and leaned within inches of him, talking with energy, hands chopping the air like pale little hatchets. “The quicker the body is brought in for an autopsy, the better chance we have for obtaining evidence. It does not matter if the death is related to our investigation or not.”

  “You’re welcome, Sarah.”

  “I told you that I am assisting the acting medical examiner today. It is my responsibility to assist with autopsies in connection with suspicious deaths.”

  “No need to bite my head off. Don’t forget I’m just a simple private dick, not a highfalutin bone carpenter like you.”

  “You are not simple.” She raised both fists, shook them, and took a deep breath. “Stop making that assertion. I find it vexing.” A student glared at them while making a loud shushing sound.

  Jack put his finger to his lips. “You’re going to bring the cops here yourself if you don’t lower your voice. I’ll call it in—where’s the telephone?”

  Sarah sat down on the very edge of the stool. “There is a telephone booth in the hall.” She spoke in a labored whisper. “I will alert Dr. Anson to expect the body.”

  “Don’t you think he’s going to be suspicious if you tell him before the cops do?”

  “You are correct. I must remain here until officially alerted.”

  “I’ll be right back.” Jack went into the empty hallway and dialed the telephone. The police operator answered with dull annoyance. When told of the dead body on Ann Street, the operator’s tone ticked up to mild boredom. Jack left the booth and went back to the lab. “I called, but there is no saying when the cops will collect the cold meat, so you could have a wait.”

  “That is acceptable, as I have work to do,” she said. “Did I speak too harshly to you earlier?”

  “You were pretty intense. I’m getting used to it.”

  “I value working with you.” Her eyes flicked up to his and then her head abruptly lowered.

  “Yeah,” said Jack. “I like you, too.”

  “You made a reasonable judgment in suspecting there may be more to Nick Monkton’s death than is readily apparent,” said Sarah, addressing the bench top. “And it may be that his death relates to Lizzie’s murder. Strictly speaking, you should have left the evidence for the police to analyze. The degree to which the police would have used the evidence in this instance is, however, questionable, as you likely understood. You also did well to keep the evidence intact.”

  “Thanks for the pep talk, but let’s focus on how these murders are linked.”

  “They may be associated, but proving that assertion requires conclusive evidence.”

  “You still have that baseball card I gave you? Okay.” Jack smiled with a tinge of satisfaction. “Compare the prints on it to those on the glasses. You might find a match to the bull who burned the card.”

  “Is your thought that Detective O’Toole killed Nick? That is possible.” She began rooting among bagged objects near her.

  “I’m going to the Rathskeller in the Hotel Kernan. Heard that Nick was always shooting his mouth off down there and somebody might have heard something useful.” Sarah ignored him as she carefully opened a bag, one of her legs bouncing up and down like a steam triphammer.

  Jack felt pretty good about pointing her to O’Toole as he left the building. It wasn’t until he got on a streetcar that he felt a sudden, stabbing regret for not warning her to keep mum about it. Sarah was no blabbermouth, but if word got back to Snake Eyes, she would be in big time danger.

  Chapter 15

  Sarah—Wednesday, October 13, 1909, 2:00 p.m.

  Lab space in the Pathological Building had room to lay out several objects for comparison along with a tray, jars of metallic powder, a fine brush, and a large magnifying glass.

  Wearing rubber surgical gloves, she carefully sprinkled dark powder on one side of the burned half of Jack’s baseball card. Then she lightly twirled the brush over the powder to reveal many fingerprints, most of which were smudged or overlapping. She repeated the same process for the flip side of the card and found several clear prints. The next step was to dust Jack’s china cup from his visit to her house earlier in the day. Brushing revealed his prints along the cup’s side.

  Comparing prints from both objects allowed her to identify thumb and forefinger marks from the card that were from Detective O’Toole. She turned to the repellent burlap containing the tumblers from Nick’s death scene. Both glasses had separate finger marks from two different people, neither of them O’Toole. Presumably one set of prints would match Nick’s. The other set of prints belonged to someone who was with Nick shortly before—and perhaps during—his death.

  She was nearly finished writing up her observations when Dr. Anson’s assistant strutted into the lab and carefully inserted his monocle before addressing her. “Doctor. Your presence is required in the dissection amphitheater. It is a most urgent matter. Come immediately, if you please.”

  The amphitheater was the largest room in the Pathological Building. A semicircular tier of seats ascended from a small, well-lit stage dominated by a large me
tal table holding a sheet-draped body. An assortment of people stood chatting among themselves in the well. “Sarah.” Anson looked at her closely, eyes bulging under the bright lights. “The police just brought in a fellow who committed suicide. It is a simple case. Are you capable of taking the lead in conducting the autopsy?”

  Sarah kept her gaze on his pointy tuft of hair for a long moment, wondering why her mentor had incited Dr. Macdonald to question her mental health. Why he—or someone who very much looked like him—was in a burlesque hall consorting with Nick and Lizzie. Looking at his bandaged hand, she recalled the bloody chisel Jack had found in Lizzie’s room. Maybe Lizzie used it to cut Anson’s hand before he hit her in the head. It was difficult to think of her mentor in this way even though his behavior was suspicious.

  “If you are not feeling well, Doctor, I can bring in someone else.” Anson shuffled his feet. “It’s quite all right. Really. I know your nerves are unsettled of late.”

  “No. I am quite well and ready to examine the body.” She turned to face the knot of people milling around. “Attention all!” Sarah called loudly and the talking stopped. “Everyone but Dr. Anson must leave the well.”

  No one moved. A rough-looking man in an ill-fitting suit poked at Anson. “Doc, you mean to say this little girl here is going to slice him open? Is that all proper and fitting?”

  “Yes, Detective, yes. Dr. Kennecott appears well enough, I suppose . . .” Anson paused ever so slightly. “In any event, this is not a hard case.”

  “Yeah, guess it don’t matter since the guy blew his brains out. I want to get this off the books fast as possible.” The detective hawked up phlegm, looked around, and spit into a stained handkerchief. “First time in fifteen years on the force I seen a broad cut into a carcass. Modern times are getting crazy, tell you what.” He gave Sarah a look before walking off.